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MORNING ENERGY NEWS  |  10/05/2020
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BREAKING! Bad weather existed before Trump took office!


E&E News (10/5/20) reports: "Joe Biden drew attention to the little-known and often destructive weather phenomenon called a 'derecho' at last week's presidential debate but said mistakenly that they have been linked to climate change. The Democratic presidential nominee cited the derecho that demolished a wide swath of Iowa in August as evidence of the cost of a warming planet. 'Look what's happened just in the Midwest with these storms that come through and wipe out entire sections and counties in Iowa. They didn't happen before. They're because of global warming,' Biden said. Biden's assertion that such events are new is wrong, and his attribution to global warming is not supported scientifically. 'We really don't know what climate change is going to do to derechos,' Villanova University atmospheric scientist Stephen Strader said. 'We don't know if there are going to be more or less. Our models are not very good.' The Fourth National Climate Assessment in 2018 said that the U.S. 'has experienced several' derechos in recent years but downplayed any link to climate change...NOAA says on its 'About Derechos' webpages that while a warmer planet 'at first glance would appear to be more conducive to the development' of derechos, other climate trends such as increased cloudiness in the lower atmosphere hinder their development."

"Letting the fossil-fuel companies move lawsuits to federal courts would effectively cause the cases to combust because of the Court’s AEP precedent. We’re glad to see that Justices aren’t punting on this important issue despite Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s threats to the Court’s independence."

 

– Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

Environmental Justice must mean dying of thirst.


Independent Institute (9/25/20) blogs: "'California American Water withdrew its application to the California Coastal Commission for a permit to construct a desalination plant in the Monterey Bay,' reported Josh Copitch of KSBW, so the Commission canceled its September 17 meeting. Opponents of the desalination plant hailed the Commission’s new policy on 'environmental justice' for nixing the project. Marina city planning commission member Kathy Biala told KSBW 'disadvantaged communities, communities of color in specific, are often victimized by larger organizations that often build environmentally damaging projects in those areas.' Marina mayor Bruce Delgado said his city would have received no water from the project but been saddled by 'all the adverse impacts.' Delgado claimed 66 percent of his constituents are 'non-white,' and 'it doesn’t get any more textbook perfect of an example to exemplify what systemic racism looks like.' To say the least, that charge is highly dubious, unlike the water needs on the Monterey Peninsula...In September of 2019, Coastal Commission staff recommended denial of the permit. Foes then doubled down on the 'environmental justice' angle, and now the plant is off the table. So are $260 million in new economic output for the region and some 1,800 jobs, and as Davi told KSBW, 'There’s a lot of things that would benefit from the peninsula having a normal amount of water.' Housing would surely be one of them, and the state is currently experiencing a housing crisis."

World's largest proven oil reserves + socialism = gasoline shortages and starvation.


Wall Street Journal (10/1/20) reports: "Ana Nuñez, a 62-year-old retired municipal worker in western Venezuela, says her meals often consist of just a few corn-flour pancakes, known as arepas. Even when she has money to buy groceries in the city of Maracaibo’s teeming flea market, she said that 'instead of quality food they sell garbage, like animal hides and rotten cheese.' A widespread scarcity of gasoline is the latest blow to domestic food production in Venezuela, preventing goods from getting to market and farmers from filling up their tractors. Food production in this oil-rich nation, led by its socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, had already been hobbled by shortages of seeds and agrochemicals, price controls that made raising crops unprofitable and government seizures of farms and food-processing plants. Venezuelans aren’t the only ones going hungry. Across Latin America the economic blow caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown millions out of work and into poverty. From Mexico City to Santiago, people are skipping meals, lining up at soup kitchens and begging, United Nations agencies say. But conditions in Venezuela, which even before the pandemic was suffering the worst economic meltdown in its history, are by far the most dire. A recent U.N.-sponsored report described Venezuela as having the fourth-worst food crisis in the world, behind only war-ravaged Yemen, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo."

Virginian consumers get to pay Dominion for their neighbors' utility bills, sort of like net metering. 


Bacon's Rebellion (9/29/20) blog: "Dominion Energy Virginia loves the General Assembly’s most recent proposal on how to deal with mounting unpaid utility bills in the COVID-19 recession. You might not. The state’s dominant utility has activated its network of grassroots lobbyists (including company retirees and stockholders) to express their personal support to their hometown delegate and senator, in an email that a recipient shared: 'Last week the Senate Finance and House Appropriation committees passed budget bills that included assistance to those utility customers who have experienced economic hardship due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. All utilities have been impacted and the legislation recognizes that relief to those citizens most at risk will be different from one region and utility to the next. The direction adopted by both Chambers have been consistently supported by Dominion Energy…' As predicted more than once, the unpaid bills ultimately come to all utility consumers. The approach outlined in the new budget language is a variation on earlier themes, but the bottom line is unchanged.   The House of Delegates also has voted to put $120 million from federal COVID-19 funds toward the unpaid utility bills, but that move reduces the burden on the families which owe the money. It reduces the amount they will need to pay back, but anything they do not pay back still will ultimately land on other ratepayers." 

Energy Markets

 
WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $38.90
Natural Gas: ↑ $2.63
Gasoline: ~ $2.18
Diesel: ↓ $2.38
Heating Oil: ↑ $112.92
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $41.01
US Rig Count: ↓ 312

 
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