It All Depends On Your Point Of Reference

The Biden administration says oil production is at historic levels. When I read that I truly wondered what in the world the people in the Biden administration were smoking.

On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about this claim by the Biden administration. Some of us remember the good old days (two years ago) when America was energy independent. We are no longer energy independent, so where does the claim that we at historic levels of oil production come from?

The article reports:

Total U.S. oil production decreased to about 11.3 million barrels per day in February, down 3.9% from the 11.8 million barrels per day produced in November, the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed. Between Nov. 1-Feb. 28, though, pump prices increased 6.4% from $3.39 per gallon to $3.61 a gallon.

“I was a little bit shocked when I first saw the numbers,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “It tells me that President Biden is going to have to work more like the devil in order to increase production.”

…By comparison, between November 2018-February 2019, production declined 1.8% and between November 2019-February 2020, production dropped just 1.1%, according to the federal data. But between November 2020-February 2021, the period when President Joe Biden replaced former President Donald Trump, production dropped a whopping 12.1%.

Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, commented:

“If people invite you to a party and every time you go to their party, somebody throws a drink in your face, you’re probably going to stop going, right?”

That pretty much sums up the way the energy sector is feeling right now.

The article concludes:

Shortly after taking office, Biden signed an executive order pausing all oil and gas leasing on federal lands and nixed the Keystone XL pipeline permit, saying the U.S. must “prioritize the development of a clean energy economy.” Since then, the administration hasn’t held a single onshore oil and gas lease sale, even after a federal judge struck down the moratorium.

In addition, the administration chose not to appeal a ruling canceling a November oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. It has also dragged its feet formulating a five-year offshore leasing plan to replace the current one that expires in June.

Much of the oil production declines between November-February were due to lower offshore output levels, according to the EIA. Crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico dropped 9.8% in that period.

Domestic oil production surged to nearly 13 million barrels a day in November 2019, 12.8% higher than current levels, the EIA data showed.

The numbers and the actions of the Biden administration do not match their claims of success.

When The Laws Of Physics Get In The Way

On Sunday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the problems with the government’s push toward green energy. The main problem is the laws of physics. Those laws are unavoidable and unbreakable.

The article quotes Isaac Orr at American Experiment:

It is a well-understood phenomenon that wind generation in the Midwest essentially disappears when the mercury dips below -22° F. Electricity generation from wind turbines drops under these circumstances because wind turbines are programmed to automatically shut off when the temperatures get this cold to prevent them from breaking.

The article at American Experiment includes the following graph:

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

The basic point here is that wind energy shows up only sporadically and unpredictably, and tends to disappear when it is needed the most. The worst time for a blackout is when the mercury is at -20, as it was yesterday where I live. Note where electricity was actually coming from in the chart above: coal, the dark brown line, was the principal source, while natural gas, the light brown line, is only slightly behind. These are the sources that liberals want to do away with. Wind was flighty; sometimes it worked, but often it didn’t. Is that how you want your light switches to operate? And if you can find solar energy on this chart, a technology in which many billions of dollars have been invested, your eyes are sharper than mine.

On energy, we are in a race against time. We need to inform voters before the lavishly-funded “green” energy lobby destroys our electrical grid and our economy, at great profit to them but at ruinous loss to the rest of us.

Please read the article posted in 2014 to see what happened when Spain decided to rely strictly on green energy. Recently the European Union seems to have had a small awakening regarding the perils of relying solely on green energy (article here).

 

The Price We Are Paying At The Gas Pump

The year 2020 was a good year for American drivers. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump was $2.64 in January 2020, dropped to $1.94 in April, and ended the year at $2.29. The website lists the current cost of a gallon of gasoline at $3.50. That’s a $12 increase in cost every time I put 10 gallons of gasoline in my car. If you are commuting to work, that adds up fast. So how does the Biden administration feel about this significant increase in the cost of gasoline? The Epoch Times posted an article today that answers that question.

The article reports:

When he announced last week that he would release more oil from the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, President Joe Biden told the American people he is doing everything possible to bring down gas prices at the pump.

That’s a lie. This administration and the climate change crazies have declared war on American energy.

They want high oil and gas prices. The Biden master plan is for American oil and gas production and consumption to go to zero over the next 15 to 20 years. How do you achieve that goal? By making oil and gas so expensive and so unavailable that Americans are forced to use alternatives.

In other words, the fact that gasoline is roughly $1.25 more expensive per gallon today under Biden than it was a year ago under former President Donald Trump didn’t happen by accident. This was not a result of a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, that could knock out our oil facilities. This was by design.

The left believes that they can change the temperature of the planet by forcing American energy companies to produce less oil and to force Americans to use less of it. How do you get people to buy less of something? You raise its price. This is basic high-school introductory economics.

The article concludes:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said it well in August that Texas “can easily produce that oil” if Biden “will just stay out of the way.”

He won’t.

The Biden administration strategy is to force-feed the American economy expensive, unreliable, and made-in-China wind and solar energy. His $3 trillion Build Back Better bill would dole out more than $500 billion of taxpayer dollars to the wind, solar, and electric vehicle industry to break the back of oil and gas production. If this energy source is so efficient, why does it need a half trillion dollars of your and my money?

Meanwhile, nearly every Biden policy has been deliberately aimed at killing U.S. oil and gas production—from killing the Keystone XL pipeline to trying to shut down other existing natural gas pipelines in the Midwest (Home heating costs are going way up this winter.) to shutting down much of Alaska oil production to new Environmental Protection Agency rules making it very difficult and expensive to drill here in America. He is also preventing the mining of American coal, which is still one of the dominant sources of electric power around the world. He also wants to raise taxes on the oil and gas industry.

Now, let’s be honest. Do any of these policies suggest that Biden and his liberal friends in the green-energy movement want to keep oil and gas prices low? If you answer yes to that, you probably believe that Al Gore invented the internet.

Elections have consequences.

What Failed?

The snow and cold in Texas has been a disaster. That part of the country is simply not prepared for that kind of weather. I’m not even sure that New England, where I spent 45 years, would handle this situation well. Now it’s time to look at why the power went out, the water went out, etc. Admittedly, this was a hundred-year storm, but as those of us who live in hurricane zones know, you have to prepare for the hundred-year storm, regardless of what form it arrives in.

Just the News posted an article today citing some of the statistics that led to the epic failure of the power grid in Texas. There was failure in all areas of energy generation, but some were greater than others. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The article reports:

A statewide blame game has accompanied the crisis, with numerous industries and commentators alleging that, variously, wind, solar, natural gas and coal failed to meet the surge in heating demand accompanying the cold snap. Yet federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicate that, of the state’s major energy sources, wind experienced the sharpest drop-off in energy production

The plunge in temperatures led to both a surge in heating demand and the concomitant power outages. Data from the EIA show that at nearly the exact same time demand was surging and energy grids were buckling, wind energy experienced a catastrophic drop-off: In the evening of Feb. 14, wind in the state was producing just over 9,000 MWh of energy, while 24 hours later it was putting out less than 800 MWh, a roughly 91% decrease in output.

Virtually every other energy industry in the state also saw decreased output over the same time period amid record demand, yet none saw as steep a decrease as did wind power. Natural gas, the state’s largest source of energy, saw a 23% decline in output, as did coal, the second-largest source. Nuclear, which competes with wind for third place, dropped 26%.

Texas has come to rely increasingly on wind power in recent years. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts said last August that the state’s usage of wind power has “more than quadrupled” since 2009, with wind rising to supply 20% of the state’s total energy needs in 2019. Coal power, meanwhile, declined from 37% of the state’s electricity generation in 2009 to 20% in 2019. 

The article concludes:

The natural gas losses could also be partly explained by wind production having plummeted so steeply in the initial cold snap and remained at low levels in subsequent days while natural gas rates remained relatively elevated. With natural gas producing so much more KWh relative to other fuels, it stands to reason that its role now in ongoing outages would likewise be disproportionately large.

A 30-day review of energy production in Texas shows that, while natural gas and wind energy were at times neck-and-neck in production rates throughout January and into mid-February, natural gas production skyrocketed following the cold snap while wind plummeted. 

Natural gas energy output in Texas hit a high on Feb. 15 before declining sharply in the following days, yet it still remained over 400% higher than it was on Feb. 7, compared to an overall 83% decrease in wind output.

The lesson here is that green energy always needs good back-up.

Another Unsung Accomplishment By President Trump

Hot Air is reporting today that America reduced its greenhouse gas emissions in 2019.

The article reports:

Increased natural gas consumption helped bring down U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, according to a recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Chances are you haven’t heard. That’s because the mainstream media and environmentalists insist on condemning the Trump administration for championing fossil fuels even though the United States is doing a better job at reducing emissions than many other countries that signed the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

The public can credit much of this success to the fracking boom, which has made natural gas much more plentiful. Cheap, abundant natural gas has gradually been displacing coal, which emits about twice as much carbon dioxide. A recent Rhodium Group study found that coal-fired power generation dropped by 18% last year, the lowest level since 1975.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, thanks to a huge abundance of cheap natural gas (generated via fracking), America reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 2% in 2019 after previously cutting them by the same amount the prior year. In fact, U.S. emissions went down by 12% between 2005 and 2017. By next year, American emissions are projected to be the lowest they have been since 1991, a time when the population was much lower than it is now.

By comparison, how are the “good” countries who signed on to the Paris accord doing? As it turns out, France Germany and the United Kingdom all missed their emissions reduction goals last year. Germany’s emissions actually increased after they started gutting their nuclear power program and were forced to restart some coal-fired plants to keep the lights turned on.

The only countries that are given high marks for meeting the climate agreement’s objectives are very small nations with low populations and not very much economic or industrial activity. So who are the real bad guys in this story? Before any global consortium starts trying to dictate to us how to handle our greenhouse gas emissions, perhaps they should get their own houses in order and follow our example. Rather than just talking about reducing emissions, we’re actually doing it. And we didn’t need a treaty with anyone else to get the job done.

The reason the success of America in reducing greenhouse gases is not heralded is that the success goes against the purpose of the climate change agenda–it doesn’t allow tyrannical countries to shake down democracies and republics.The goal of the climate change rhetoric is to redistribute the world’s wealth–to take money from countries that have prospered under the free market and give it to countries where the government controls the economy. America’s success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions simply does not fit the desired template.

The Cost Of A Scientific Hoax

I guess I am a global-warming denier. I am convinced that climate change is an ongoing thing that is not necessarily related to man’s activity. I really don’t think we are important enough to have a major impact on the climate of the earth. However, I do support clean air, clean water, and recycling. I just don’t support global warming as an excuse to make everyone (except the people who profit from it financially) miserable. Well, that is happening again.

Investor’s Business Daily reported today that the price of electricity is soaring due to government regulation.

The article reports:

In November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ Electricity Price Index hit 202.284, an all-time record and nearly 20% higher than just six years ago.

This might strike some as strange, given the private-sector shale-fracking boom going on in the Midwest, Northeast and Texas, which has led to soaring new domestic supplies of natural gas and oil.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as recently as 2008 the U.S. produced 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Today, it’s 12.3 billion cubic feet and growing fast — truly astounding growth.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is on the verge of producing more oil than it ever has, and domestic sources now outstrip foreign ones. Thanks to fracking, more’s on the way.

But as energy booms, electricity prices are going up.

…Electricity is now one of the most regulated goods in the U.S. Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping powers to regulate C02 — a power we can’t find anywhere in the Constitution — electricity is becoming a very expensive commodity.

And it’s about to get even more so. According to the Institute for Energy Research, EPA rules put in place to please environmentalists will remove 34,705 megawatts of coal-based energy capacity off our market.

Think about it: That’s equal to about 10% of what we now produce with coal being removed from the grid.

The new regulations are forcing coal plants to close and be replaced with less efficient and less reliable green energy–wind and solar–that are more expensive to generate. The increased cost is then passed on to the consumer–us. As the Obama Administration forces Americans down the path of green energy, our European neighbors are abandoning that path due to unreliable energy and the cost of green energy. Unfortunately, it may take us a while to learn that lesson.

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