Pumping problems

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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 03/16/2023

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Isn't this what Biden wants us to use?

Telegraph (2/1/23) reports: "No one denies that changing the way we heat our homes will play a major role in eventually achieving a carbon neutral economy. Heating our houses accounts for 14pc of the UK’s carbon emissions, so unless we can find a clever offsetting scheme or make drastic changes to other parts of our economy, we will eventually have to find an alternative to the gas boilers that three-quarters of British households use right now It will be the biggest change to the housing stock since we switched from town to natural gas in the 1970s. It will require billions of pounds in investment. It is, to put it mildly, important that we get it right...Indeed, for new houses, gas boilers will be banned from 2025, and existing homes may not be far behind. By the end of the decade, we may well be forcing people to rip out old heating systems. And yet amid some very stiff competition, the drive to install heat pumps as the country’s main source of domestic heating is turning into the greatest eco fiasco of the decade...But the problems don’t stop there. Heat pumps don’t generate nearly as much heat as the equipment they are replacing, meaning that homes need to be insulated as well – and as we’ve just noted, it’s often virtually impossible to upgrade homes dating back to the 19th or even 18th century to the required standard. And insulation is not the only added expense involved...And even if by some miracle we did manage to get them all installed and they all worked, it’s not even clear we’d be able to generate enough electricity to power them all. We can’t seem to get a nuclear power station built or find a sensible way to manage the intermittent production of wind turbines."

"Every time we need a pipeline, road or dam, an average of almost 5 years and millions of dollars in costs get added to the project to comply with Washington’s permitting process. That’s too long. We can streamline permitting and still protect the environment. That’s a goal worthy of the number one."

– Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

The amount of money being wasted on green schemes is simply breathtaking.

Times of San Diego (3/12/23) reports: "When Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his scaled down blueprint for the California bullet train four years ago, he proposed building a 171-mile starter segment in the Central Valley that would begin operating in 2030 and cost $22.8 billion. Today, the blueprint is fraying — costs now exceed future funding, an official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and the schedule to start to carry people is slipping. That’s raising fresh concerns about the future of the nation’s largest infrastructure project. New cost figures issued in an update report from the California High-Speed Rail Authority show that the plan to build the 171-mile initial segment has shot up to a high of $35 billion, exceeding secured funding by $10 billion. The cost of that partial system is now higher than the $33 billion estimate for the entire 500-mile Los Angeles to San Francisco system when voters approved a bond in 2008.What’s worse, that full system cost is set at up to $128 billion in the update, leaving a total funding gap of more than $100 billion for politicians to ponder."

If you're headed to the grave, you don't blame the hearse.

Real Clear Energy (3/15/23) column "Between 2011 and 2022, residential customers of Kentucky Power saw their electric bills increase by 78 percent – from 9 cents per kilowatt hour to 16 cents per kilowatt hour. This increase coincided with the shutdown of the company’s Big Sandy coal-fired power plant and its conversion to natural gas. Meanwhile, residential customers of LG&E saw their electric bills go up by 33 percent over the same period – from just over 9 cents per kilowatt hour to just over 12 cents per kilowatt hour. And residential customers of Duke Energy saw a 48 percent increase. Lastly, Kentucky saw its national rank among states for the lowest cost of power from 4th to 18th. The one common factor in the rise of electric bills for Kentuckians is the closure of approximately 6000 MW of coal-fired capacity that has been shut down in Kentucky over the past decade. That is enough power generation capacity to provide electricity to every home in Kentucky for three years. A few months ago, LG&E and KU announced further closures of coal generation across the state, and coal capacity continues to be retired at breakneck speed across the country. Defenders of the push to close coal capacity claim it will save customers money. But it clearly hasn’t so far, as the skyrocketing price of electricity clearly shows. In fact, more and more Kentucky families are facing energy poverty – forced to choose between food on the table and paying their ever-increasing electric bills."

One lucky winter doesn't vindicate the hobbling of Europe's heating capacity.

Reuters (3/15/23) column: "Europe was exceptionally lucky with the weather this winter - which explains why gas stocks are close to a seasonal record high and front-month futures prices have fallen to the lowest level for almost 19 months. Temperatures across the region in both October and January were the highest on record, and November was the third-highest, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Temperatures in November and February were also above the long-term average, though the anomalies were much less extreme. During the core of the heating season, which runs from December to February and accounts for more than half of total annual heating demand, regional temperatures were 2.49°C) above the average for the 20th century. The core winter season of 2022/23 was the second warmest on record, after the winter of 2019/20, when temperatures were 3.32°C above average. Temperature records display a clear warming trend for the last four decades, and clusters of warmer-than-normal or colder-than-normal years have been common in the long-term record. But regional temperatures display considerable annual variability and there is no certainty winter 2023/24 will be anywhere near as mild. From a prudent planning perspective, Europe must prepare for next winter to be colder, putting more stress on gas supplies and prices."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $65.99
Natural Gas: ↑ $2.49
Gasoline: ↓ $3.46

Diesel: ↓ $4.32
Heating Oil: ↓ $252.62
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $72.09
US Rig Count: ↓ 820

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