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MORNING ENERGY NEWS  |  12/05/2019
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The all out of fuel boogaloo.


The Local (12/3/19) reports: "Hundreds of filling stations around France have run out of petrol and diesel as blockades of oil refineries enter their second week. Construction workers have been blockading refineries in Brittany since last week and a blockade at La Rochelle - which was listed over the weekend - has resumed. French media reported on Tuesday morning that 390 filling stations have no fuel at all, and another 389 have limited supplies. The areas affected include Brittany, the west of France, the southeast coast area around Marseille and some parts of eastern France near the Swiss border...The workers staging the blockages belong to the public construction group BTP, Bâtiments et Travaux Publics. They are protesting a fuel tax hike planned for 2020, which they say will have a negative financial impact on their companies. Until now, the so-called gazole non routier (GNR), used mainly by construction workers and farmers, is subject to a tax benefit that is planned to be phased out in 2020. According to the workers, this will increase their fuel prices by 45 percent, adding an hourly cost of about €10 for an average mechanical excavator, which they fear will hurt especially the smaller construction businesses. The government suspended the fuel tax hike last December to appease the ‘yellow vest’ protesters, whose main demands included abolishing the fuel tax."

"It may be a century, now, since Ludwig von Mises offered his famous critique on the 'impossibility' of rational economic calculation under socialist central planning. But the renewed call for a new 'democratic' socialism and a Green New Deal of government planning shows that his argument remains as relevant today as when he penned it a hundred years ago."

 

– Richard M. Ebeling,
American Institute for Economic Research

Peak privilege: taking a day off work to protest affordable, reliable energy. 


Daily Local News (12/1/19) reports: "About 40 activists pulled the plug on Sunoco's Mariner East pipeline construction for about an hour Saturday morning, idling about a dozen pipeline workers. About a dozen community advocates carried signs and a bull horn, and entered the construction right-of-way at Meadow and Shepherd lanes, while another three dozen sang protest songs, chanted and held signs high. Sunoco/Energy Transfer, which is building the multi-billion dollar project, was forced to temporarily shut down drilling operations. Police threatened community advocates with misdemeanor arrest and finger printing if they did not stay outside barriers...The action was part of a 'Cease and Desist' movement by demonstrators opposed to the Mariner East project, which will transport hundreds of thousands of barrels of volatile liquid gases through densely populated neighborhoods to a facility in Marcus Hook. "

Life long bureaucrats would rather throw away their career than be forced to leave the swamp and dwell among the yokels.


E&E News (12/3/19) reports: "The Bureau of Land Management appears poised to lose the majority of its Washington, D.C.-based staff as part of its plans to relocate out West next year, numerous sources both within and outside the bureau have told E&E News. That could include dozens of employees in the departments that handle public lands planning, compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, management of hazardous materials, and oil and gas development on the 245 million acres BLM manages, according to multiple sources who asked not to be identified. BLM notified 159 D.C.-based employees Nov. 12 that they were being relocated either to the new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., or to other state offices across the West. The notifications gave employees 30 days — or until next week — to accept the relocation. Most employees have not formally notified the bureau that they will stay or leave... 'Very few' staffers are moving One of the hardest-hit areas appears to be the Resources and Planning Department, which is responsible for threatened and endangered species, NEPA compliance, and wild horses and burros. The department's Decision Support and Analysis, Planning and NEPA division has 20 positions. Two are vacant; a third, socioeconomics program lead, is already in Fort Collins, Colo."

The unintended consequences are often the ones that hurt the most, but at least this one is worth a good laugh.


Reason (12/2/19) reports: "The results of plastic bag bans and restrictions are frequently disappointing, and occasionally counter-productive. Take the United Kingdom, where a country-wide bag fee is encouraging consumers to switch from single-use bags to thicker, reusable bags that use more plastic. Last Thursday, Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-profit, released a report on the plastic consumption of British grocery stores that found they were actually using more plastic even as customers switch from using thin, disposable plastic bags to thicker reusable 'bags for life.' The report found that use of these 'bags for life' increased from 960 million in 2018 to 1.5 billion in 2019. That's a big single-year increase and well above the 439 million reusable plastic 'bags for life' dispensed by the seven largest British grocery stores in 2014, according to a Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) study. The U.K. imposed a mandatory 5-pence fee in 2015 on all plastic bags given out by retailers in the country in hopes of reducing plastic use. 'It is clear from this data that many people are simply swapping 'single-use' plastic bags for these plastic bags for "life",' reads the Greenpeace/EIA report. 'The impact of this simple substitution is a major concern, given the significantly higher plastic content of bags for life.'...Even if environmentalists in the U.K., or rich countries more broadly, eliminate plastic use completely, it will have little effect on the overall problem of global plastic pollution. Successfully banning plastic bags, either the disposable kind or the 'for life' kind, won't save the oceans, but they will punish shoppers." 

Energy Markets

 
WTI Crude Oil: ↑↓$58.75
Natural Gas: ↑ $2.42
Gasoline: ~ $2.59
Diesel: ~ $3.00
Heating Oil: ↑ $193.47
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $63.25
US Rig Count: ↑ 822

 
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