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MORNING ENERGY NEWS  |  9.3.2019
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And the media says our president is in the pocket of big business...


Wall Street Journal (8/30/19) reports: "Environmentalists and Big Oil aren’t as much at odds as they claim. Witness their joint opposition this week to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to ease methane regulation. The dirty secret is that the petrol giants don’t mind rules that hurt small competitors...The Trump EPA is proposing to rescind the Obama methane rule while retaining emissions limits for ozone-forming volatile organic compounds that can escape from wells with methane. The EPA estimates its revisions will save energy companies between $97 million and $123 million from 2019 through 2025. That’s chump change next to the $50 billion in combined earnings that Exxon Mobil , Royal Dutch Shell and BP reported last year. But the deregulation will help small producers struggling amid low oil and natural gas prices. Large producers are trying to burnish their green image by criticizing the Trump EPA for loosening climate regulation. But they’d also no doubt be relieved if their small competitors, which have continued to increase production, had to fold due to the regulatory onus. Credit to the Trump EPA for not getting captured by big business."

"If America is using energy from natural gas that is one-half to one-third as expensive as green energy, this is one of the best ways to make American manufacturing, technology, steel and agriculture the cheapest and most productive in the world. This is also a smart way to keep making America great again."

 

– Stephen Moore, FreedomWorks

Transparency?


E&E News (8/30/19) reports: "Presidential candidate Tom Steyer released nine years of tax returns, but the disclosures do not show whether he retains investments in fossil fuels. The climate change activist and former hedge fund manager has stated he has divested all of his previous fossil fuel investments, but his tax returns do not show evidence to confirm or deny that. Steyer and his wife also disclosed their state taxes and returns from charitable organizations...Nonetheless, Steyer is citing the returns — which show he made $1.2 billion in gross income between 2009 and 2017 — as a move toward transparency...The campaign defended what it did and did not include in the disclosure."

When the head of Local 18 calls Mayor Garcetti's Green New Deal "childlike," he probably shouldn't hold out to much hope for a blue-green alliance.


Green Tech Media (8/29/19) reports: "Los Angeles made waves this summer by finalizing a 400-megawatt solar project with a record-breaking low price. But the project, developed by 8minute Solar Energy, still needs final approval. That approval failed to materialize in a vote Tuesday, after the municipal utility union expressed concerns about the project, the L.A. Times reported. The L.A. Department of Water and Power Board of Commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of the Eland solar project, but with one member abstaining and one absent, it failed to clear the majority needed to approve...The leader of the utility union International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 has criticized Mayor Eric Garcetti's Green New Deal plan, which will shut down three coastal gas plants. IBEW business manager Brian D'Arcy alleges the decision will cut jobs, raise the prices on electricity and threaten blackouts, and even went so far as to call the mayor's plan 'a childlike proposal,' as reported in the L.A. Times."

So much for the "low environmental impact" of renewable energy.


Wood Mackenzie (9/2/19) reports: "Over 650 GW of new onshore and 130 GW of new offshore wind capacity will be installed between 2018 and 2028. This will consume in excess of 5.5Mt of copper, according to a recent analysis by Wood Mackenzie. Henry Salisbury, Wood Mackenzie Research Analyst, said: 'Wind technology is the most copper-intensive form of power generation and is anticipated to consume the largest amount of copper over the next ten years in this sector. Due to higher copper intensity, offshore turbines will command an increasing share of copper consumption. Progressive development of larger wind turbines will increase copper intensities, providing an upside risk to copper consumption in the longer-term beyond 2024,' said Mr. Salisbury."

Remember, weather is only related to climate change when it sucks.


Spectator (9/2/19) reports: "Hurricane Dorian had hardly struck the shores of the Bahamas before Twitter began to fill up with comments willing it to carry on and flatten Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago estate in Florida ‘to teach the climate change denier-in-chief’ a lesson...For some of this evidence, there are obvious objections. The Guardian piece, for example, uses figures for hurricane damage as a proxy for hurricane activity. It ought to be obvious that the amount of financial damage wrought by a hurricane is a function not just of wind strength and wave height but of the value of property which lies in its path. Hurricanes are now striking areas which were not populated in the 1950s but are now full of valuable villas and condominiums. Of course, they cause more damage...In other words anyone who claims that Dorian, or any other hurricane, is a product of climate change and asserts that it would not have happened, or would have been less damaging, without man-made climate change does not have science on their side. On the contrary, it is they who are denying the evidence." 

The WSJ Ed Board nails it once again.


Wall Street Journal (9/2/19) editorial: "The great myth of political subsidies for business is that they will help an industry get started and then go away. We’ll soon see if Congress can for once live up to its temporary promise and block the emerging effort to continue subsidizing the affluent to buy electric cars. Wyoming Republican John Barrasso is circulating a letter asking Senate Leader Mitch McConnell to reject an expansion or extension of the electric-vehicle tax credit...Automakers say federal subsidies are necessary to help them comply with California’s EV mandate, which a dozen or so other states have adopted. But then why shouldn’t these states pick up the subsidy tab to fulfill the mandates that they are imposing? By the way, CEO Elon Musk had been saying not too long ago that his competitors want the subsidies while Tesla doesn’t need them. But Tesla’s sales fell as the tax-credit phaseout hit, and he’s now joined the special pleading for a subsidy expansion. None of this will have the slightest impact on the climate." 

Energy Markets

 
WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $54.01
Natural Gas: ↑ $2.32
Gasoline: ↓ $2.57
Diesel: ↑ $2.92
Heating Oil: ↓ $179.33
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $57.73
US Rig Count: ↓ 938

 
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