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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 02/26/2024

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Dems pushed climate action. Then utility bills skyrocketed.

Politico (2/21/24) reports: "California Democrats proudly authored nation-leading clean energy goals that forced the automobile industry to go electric and shaped global climate policy. Then the bill came due. There is intensifying political pressure on state lawmakers to do something about utility bills that have shot up by as much as 127 percent over the last decade. Climate spending — from wildfire prevention to building out transmission capacity and paying for renewables — is partly to blame."

"We are told that the loss of Detroit’s native advantage in building cars, in favor of an uncertain EV future, is creative destruction. But it feels more like a choice, prodded on by governments and assented to by automakers regulated by governments."

– J ames Davd Dickson,
Detroit News

One of the many problems with Biden trying to appease his environmental donors: if we don't export LNG, Qatar will.

Reuters (2/25/24) reports: "Qatar will raise natural gas production despite a recent steep drop in global prices, in a long-term bet on rising demand for the less polluting fuel in Europe and Asia... Asian and European gas prices surged to a record in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent cutoff of Russian gas supplies to Europe. Amid the price surge, U.S. gas suppliers filled the supply vacuum, establishing themselves as the world's biggest LNG exporter in 2023, surpassing Qatar, though Qatari supplies also helped to replace the volumes. The Qatari announcement also follows a decision from U.S. President Joe Biden to pause approvals for applications for new LNG export terminals for environmental reviews, prompting warnings from gas importers that the move would compromise future energy security worldwide. In the announcement, Kaabi said Asian gas markets would continue to grow and Europe would still need more gas for the foreseeable future. 'We still think there's a big future for gas for at least 50 years forward and whenever we can technically do more, we'll do more,' he said at a news conference in Doha. 'We see that Europe is going to need gas for a very, very long time. But the growth in Asia is definitely going to be bigger than the growth in Europe, basically driven by population growth.'"

The Net Zero games continue in Europe.

The Spectator (2/23/24) op-ed: "If a week is a long time in politics, then 2023 belongs to a different age in the politics of Net Zero. Less than eleven months ago, the government was saying that ‘Net Zero is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. Earlier this week, former IMF chief economist Oliver Blanchard effectively poured water on that claim when he told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee that there would be a ‘substantial fiscal cost to achieve anything close to Net Zero’. ‘The public does not believe, or has not been made to understand, that [it] is going to be costly for them,’ Blanchard cautioned. He then went on to suggest that Net Zero should be funded by higher public borrowing. In similar vein, Sir Dieter Helm told the committee that it was ‘delusory to think’ that the Net Zero transition would pay for itself. It was his 2017 cost of energy review that warned ministers the energy policy was not sustainable. Sir Dieter could also have added that it is a delusion promoted by climate lobbyists. As if to validate what the two economists were telling the Lords committee, the German-owned electricity producer RWE briefed the Financial Times that the level of government support – funded through the guaranteed prices electricity consumers are forced to pay for wind energy –is too low to offset rising wind power costs. The government’s model used forecasts of wholesale electricity prices that were too low and its assumptions on wind power performance assumptions too high."

Reminder: only 3 percent of American voters view climate change as our most pressing issue.

Energy Freedom and Security Substack (2/24/24) reports: "The American Energy Alliance, an affiliate of the Institute for Energy Research, did a poll in December 2023 that tells us a lot about how voters truly feel regarding carbon taxes. This is especially relevant in states such as Pennsylvania and Washington which seem determined to impose such taxes on their residents. The data, unsurprisingly, shows voters don’t want such taxes... The survey results confirm that there has been little change in sentiment and attitudes on energy and climate change. Many of the responses in the survey are either consistent with or more emphatic than what we have found in previous surveys. For example, just 3 percent of respondents identified climate change as the most pressing issue facing the United States, compared to the 59 percent that identified the economy as either the first or second most important issue facing the United States."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $76.08
Natural Gas: ↑ $1.67
Gasoline: ↑ $3.26

Diesel: ↓ $4.07
Heating Oil: ↑ $269.63
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $81.16
US Rig Count: ↓ 646

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