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MORNING ENERGY NEWS  |  05/19/2020
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Biden to working Americans -- drop dead! 


Fox News (5/18/20) reports: "The Biden campaign on Monday affirmed that if he’s elected president, Joe Biden would rescind President Trump’s permit to allow the Keystone XL oil pipeline to cross the U.S. border. The Obama administration had rejected the pipeline twice. But, two months into his presidency, Trump reversed the decision and directed the State Department to approve Keystone XL. In 2017, after reviewing its impact on the environment and climate, the State Department approved the permit to build the $8 billion transnational pipeline that would carry up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Canada to Nebraska...'Biden strongly opposed the Keystone pipeline in the last administration, stood alongside President Obama and [then-Secretary of State John] Kerry to reject it in 2015, and will proudly stand in the Roosevelt Room again as president and stop it for good by rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit,' Feldman continued. Less than two weeks after the pipeline project got underway in April, a judge canceled a key permit, saying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to adequately consider effects on endangered species such as pallid sturgeon, a massive, dinosaur-like fish living in rivers the pipeline would cross."

"If renewable energy firms hope to gain equal footing with oil and natural gas producers, they'll need to learn how to survive economic downturns without the government coming to the rescue."

 

– Tom Giovanetti,
Institute for Policy Innovation

Reality check.


ABC News (5/17/20) reports: "Electric vehicles have always been a tough sell with Americans. They're more expensive, require a different mindset and the inability to quickly recharge on the road has led to severe range anxiety. Demand for these battery-powered vehicles was weak even before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world. With nearly 36 million Americans out of work and fuel prices averaging $1.85 a gallon nationally, what does the future look like for EVs? 'If someone was trying to engineer the downfall of the electric car movement, they did a good job,' Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader, told ABC News. 'I think the biggest impact from the pandemic is financial security or lack thereof. To grow EV sales you have to appeal to mainstream consumers. Every single American is thinking about finances and what risks they are willing to take, and that's a terribly negative impact for EV sales.' In 2019, EVs accounted for 1.44% of U.S. auto sales, according to data from Cox Automotive. When plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs, are included, market share ticks up to 1.94%. The average transaction price of an EV last year was $41,959 compared with $38,671 for SUVs and $29,795 for sedans."

In case you were wondering what the Green New Deal would look like in practice...


E&E News (5/19/20) reports: "Idle planes on the runway. Poor Americans under duress. Energy workers in the unemployment line. For more than a year, that was the bleak future President Trump painted for America if the Green New Deal went into effect. Now those predictions have came true. Not because of the Green New Deal, but because of the novel coronavirus pandemic — a scourge that critics say Trump didn't do enough to prepare for. The irony, perhaps, hasn't been lost on the nation's 45th president. Trump largely has refrained from repeating his dim view of the Green New Deal since COVID-19 took root in the United States. Take Trump's trip last week to Pennsylvania, where the fracking industry is dominant...In the last couple of months, however, few energy jobs have stayed safe. They've been slashed across the country, in fossil fuel production as well as green energy. An estimated 600,000 clean energy jobs have been lost in the United States, according to the advocacy group Environmental Entrepreneurs. Oil and gas drilling and refining lost 51,000 jobs in March alone, according to the BW Research Partnership."

Have no fear, it's not going anywhere.


Bloomberg (5/19/20) reports: "Oil production from the top seven shale regions in the U.S. is set to tumble to levels not seen since 2018 as drillers scale back in response to the recent price collapse. Losses will be led by the Permian Basin -- which straddles Texas and New Mexico -- where output is seen falling by 87,000 barrels a day in June to 4.29 million, according to the Energy Information Administration’s latest Drilling Productivity Report. Overall production is seen falling by 197,000 barrels a day next month to 7.822 million barrels, which would be the lowest since late 2018. The expected decline would have been even more dramatic if not for a downward revision to May’s output estimate in the order of half a million barrels a day. Casualties of the unprecedented oil downturn have included thousands of job losses as producers shut in wells with demand in freefall as a result of the pandemic. With oil prices on their way up as lockdowns are lifted and cities re-open, the worst of the slowdown may be over. However, analysts at IHS Markit Ltd. expect output will continue to decline for the rest of the year and into 2021 as the market whittles down a huge supply glut." 

Energy Markets

 
WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $33.00
Natural Gas: ↑ $1.85
Gasoline: ↑ $1.88
Diesel: ↓ $2.41
Heating Oil: ↓ $100.39
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $34.97
US Rig Count: ↓ 356

 
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