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DAILY ENERGY NEWS  | 04/17/2024
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There's nothing righteous about making it a crime to sell gasoline to willing customers.


Wall Street Journal (4/15/24) op-ed: "Federal courts have limited the Biden administration’s authority to set nationwide standards regulating emissions from power plants. But some cities and states are pushing to meet stringent climate goals by other means. In October, the Hawaii Supreme Court allowed the city and county of Honolulu, along with the local water utility board, to claim that oil and gas companies failed to disclose the risks their products posed to the environment. As a result, the suit alleges, buyers overconsumed oil and gas, which caused excess emissions, which increased global temperatures, which caused sea levels to rise, which then damaged Honolulu. The energy companies are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put a stop to this charade. It should, for several reasons...Energy companies have no statutory duty to talk about global warming when selling oil and gas. Even if they did, liability typically requires that asymmetric information exist between the speaker and its target audience. That situation arises, for example, with a latent product defect, like a missing bolt on an airplane door assembly. Here, however, Honolulu claims that the energy companies failed to disclose risks that carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions pose to the environment—matters of which virtually every member of the public is keenly aware. That alone should torpedo the case. If the unspecified misstatements or omissions mattered, they could at most cause a slight reduction in usage, which would have no environmental effects at all. Honolulu claims the right to milk energy companies for massive damages even though there is no meaningful connection between the lawful sale of gasoline products in Hawaii and the asserted harm caused by worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. 

"The Biden administration’s current mineral policies in a nutshell: If the Ambler Access Project was in Africa, they’d probably be supporting it and subsidizing it. But since it’s in Alaska, and some of it crosses federal land, they’re politicizing and rejecting it." 

 

– Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

I'm just spitballing here, but maybe Team Biden shouldn't have sent pallets full of "humanitarian" cash to Iran and also looked the other way when they started ramping their oil production back up.  


Rigzone (4/17/24) reports: "Will Iran's attack on Israel impact USA gasoline prices? "Only if oil prices are impacted, Ellen R. Wald, the President of Transversal Consulting, told Rigzone. Wald highlighted that oil prices “barely moved” when trading opened in Asia on Monday, “so it's not likely that oil will make significant moves based on the events that occurred over the weekend”. Iran’s attack on Israel will have an impact on U.S. gasoline prices if it leads to strict Iran sanction enforcement and lower Iranian oil production, Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR) Director Al Salazar told Rigzone...Alex Stevens, the Manager of Policy and Communications at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), said the Iranian attack on Israel will have an impact on both oil prices globally and on U.S. gasoline prices if retaliations continue and the conflict spreads regionally.  'At the moment, with Israel fighting Hamas in Gaza, a proxy of Iran, most fighting has been contained,' Stevens told Rigzone. 'However, Iran launching part of their attack from Iran proper does indicate their willingness to become directly involved,' he added. 'Since Iran produces more than three million barrels per day of crude oil, and the Middle East accounts for 31.3 percent of global oil production, any large-scale regional conflict would have a negative impact on oil prices, which would obviously translate to higher gasoline prices for consumers,' he continued."

Some more spitballing, but maybe Team Biden shouldn't have deliberately taken hundreds of actions to make it harder to produce oil and natural gas in our own country.
 

Epoch Times (4/16/24) reports: "President Joe Biden has taken more than 200 actions against the U.S. oil and gas industry, according to a new report from the Institute for Energy Research (IER). 'President Biden and Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase,' IER wrote in the March report. 'Since Mr. Biden took office, his administration and its allies have taken over 200 actions deliberately designed to make it harder to produce energy here in America.' The analysis lists each of President Biden’s actions against the industry in chronological order, beginning on his first day in office, Jan. 20, 2021, through the first week of March 2024. On his first day in office, President Biden revoked the March 2019 permit for the Keystone Pipeline, canceled all oil and gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and revoked President Donald Trump’s executive orders to decrease regulations to expand domestic production."

When the government massively distorts markets, you get this kind of ridiculousness...

Energy Markets

 
WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $84.52
Natural Gas: ↓ $1.67
Gasoline: ↑ $3.66
Diesel: ↑ $4.05
Heating Oil: ↓ $262.45
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $89.05
US Rig Count: ↓ 637

 

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