With the decision by the Supreme Court to consider and probably reverse a lower court’s ruling that the EPA exceeded its authority in issuing a “cross-state” pollution rule last year, environmentalists were delighted. The lower court’s decision was “confusing”, according to Janice Nolen, assistant vice president of the American Lung Association, adding that
Tag Archives: Energy
Supreme Court Expected to Allow the EPA to Impose Severe Rules on Coal-fired Plants
- Monday, 07 September 2020 08:54
- 0 Comments
IEA Declares OPEC Has Accomplished Its Mission: Oil Is Now “Balanced”
- Tuesday, 24 April 2018 05:17
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 23, 2018:
“It’s not for us to declare on behalf of the Vienna agreement [the OPEC production-cut agreement in force since January 2017] that it is ‘mission accomplished’, but if our outlook is accurate, it certainly looks very much like it,” said the International Energy Agency (IEA) last week. Those production cuts, aided by the rolling disaster in Venezuela that continues to take crude oil production off the world market, have, according to the IEA, brought down the world’s crude oil stocks within shouting distance of OPEC’s goal: the five-year average of those stocks.
Compliance among members of the OPEC cartel and its friends (including Russia) has been extraordinarily high, with Saudi Arabia helping things along by cutting its own production far more deeply than the agreement called for.
U.S. production, estimated to approach 11 million barrels a day by the end of the year (twice what it was just seven years ago), has been unable to match the production cuts and worldwide demand, which has greatly surprised to the upside.
Add in concerns that on May 12 the president of the United States will decide
Hey, Prince! How Does it Feel to Have the Crude Oil Shoe on the Other Foot?
- Wednesday, 21 March 2018 09:43
- 0 Comments
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, March 21, 2018:
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is about to enjoy learning what the Old Testament teaches about the sins of his father:
The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.
In the 1970s, many of us still remember the pain and suffering that Saudi Arabia’s kings inflicted on the United States and its citizenry in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel: long lines at gas stations, alternate days to fill up, double nickel highway speeds, daylight “savings” time, and other punishments.
The prince, born in 1985, won’t remember those days, but his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, most certainly does. And during his two-week sales tour of the United States, the prince is going to learn about justice delayed. He now needs the help of the United States to keep his sand castle from falling into the sea or disappearing into the Arabian desert.
Specifically, the prince has a dream – Vision 2030 – but
Crude Oil Prices Fall Below $60, Traders Expect $55 or Lower
- Tuesday, 13 February 2018 06:39
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 12, 2018:
With the price of crude oil for March delivery falling below $60 a barrel last week on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), half of OPEC’s worst nightmare is taking place: Higher oil prices sought by the cartel are bringing on American production at a faster rate than ever before. The other half of the nightmare would be a slowdown in global demand for the stuff.
A sell-off was triggered by an announcement last week from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) that U.S. crude oil production exceeded 10 million barrels per day (bpd) last month — the first time since 1970 — and would continue to set records into 2018. In addition, U.S. oil rig count jumped by 26, the largest jump in a year.
Helping along was the
With Venezuela’s Marxist Dictator Gone, the Country’s Oil Production Could Soar
- Tuesday, 13 February 2018 06:32
- 0 Comments
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, February 12, 2018:
By every measure, Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolas Maduro isn’t long for this world. His socialist regime is losing altitude and airspeed at a most satisfyingly horrific rate. His people are starving, as are many in his army. Citizens are fleeing into Colombia to buy food missing from shelves at home, and many are staying there. He’s in default on his estimated $150 billion national debt, and his lenders – China, Russia, and Cuba – appear to be increasingly reluctant to throw good money after bad. American refineries, which have been supporting Maduro through their purchases of his country’s sticky crude, have happily cut them by two-thirds, finding more reliable sources in Canada and Mexico, and as a result helping to starve Maduro into oblivion.
Finally, his precious oil company, PdVSA, which is essentially Maduro’s only oxygen hose, is failing as well. Its production is down to a little over a million barrels a day. In 2014 it produced more than three.
So it’s reasonable to assume, as economist Herb Stein expressed it, that “if something cannot continue, it will end.” And the end of Maduro won’t be lamented.
In a burst of perhaps unjustified optimism,
Fracking Revolution Pushes U.S. Daily Crude Oil Production Over 10 Million Barrels
- Saturday, 03 February 2018 06:18
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, February 2, 2018:
November’s production of crude oil in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), not only exceeded October’s by four percent, but rose to a level not seen in nearly 50 years: 10 million barrels a day. The agency went even further: At this rate daily U.S. crude oil production will exceed that of both Russia and Saudi Arabia by the end of next year.
If not sooner. The EIA’s forecast is that crude oil production will grow by 10 percent this year, but that could turn out to be much too low. As Todd Staples, head of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, noted:
American crude oil [production] is a game-changer in international trade, global politics and domestic energy security. Crude oil imports are down 20 percent from 2006 and, today, we are competing with the Middle East in the export market.
These outcomes were unthinkable a decade ago.
Indeed. As recently as 2011 the United States was only producing about
U.S. Oil Production Will Soon Overtake Saudi Arabia’s
- Tuesday, 23 January 2018 06:45
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 22, 2018:
Fatih Birol, head of the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), told a congressional committee last week, “What we see is a result of the shale revolution [fracking]. The U.S. is becoming the undisputed leader of oil and gas production worldwide. [U.S.] oil production is growing very strongly and will continue to grow. We think that this growth is unprecedented [both in the] size of the growth and the pace of the growth.”
In 1973, Saudi Arabia punished U.S. citizens with an oil embargo in retaliation for the U.S. government’s support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. It could do so because it held the biggest hammer: Saudi Arabia controlled the world’s largest reserves of crude oil and the kingdom. Within months, the price of oil quadrupled in the United States, resulting in shortages and rationing. Gas stations were closed, and when they reopened they were forced to restrict gasoline purchases to “odd” and “even” days depending upon their customers’ license plate numbers. The federal government imposed “double-nickel” (55 mph) speed limits on highways, and experimented with “daylight saving” time in order to reduce the impact of the embargo.
Those days are long gone and not likely ever to return. Saudi Arabia and its OPEC cartel are slowly being reduced to bit players in the global energy market. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman saw that coming more than two years ago when he announced
Venezuela’s Oil Production Collapsing Along With Its Economy
- Saturday, 20 January 2018 06:45
- 0 Comments
Fatih Birol, head of the IEA
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 19, 2018:
The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) reported on Friday that oil production from Venezuela’s state-owned, state-controlled, and state-operated energy company, PdVSA, dropped by 12 percent last month, following a decline by a third in 2017. The announcement avoided saying anything disparaging about the Marxist government’s ham-handed mismanagement of the company, nor did it criticize attempts to run the company with military officers with no technical training in place of the technicians who were in place earlier. Nothing was said about the arrest of dozens of top officials of the oil company in Maduro’s attempt to blame the fall in production on their corruption, mismanagement, and fraud, instead of his socialist program of Chavismo. And certainly no mention was made of the root cause of the collapse: Socialism always fails when it runs out of other people’s money.
Maduro is about out of other people’s money.
Record Bullish Bets on Crude Oil Raising Red Flags
- Tuesday, 16 January 2018 06:33
- 0 Comments
OPEC countries
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 15, 2018:
Traders in oil futures have just set a new record: The bets they have placed that crude oil will move even higher just set a world record. As of last week, there were 432,000 net long positions reflecting that optimism. That optimism could be short-lived. As analysts from JBC Energy consulting told its clients on Monday: “From a fundamental perspective, the surge in U.S. managed money raises a clear red flag for us.”
Since the low in June, the price for the future delivery of U.S. crude oil is up almost 50 percent, from $44 a barrel to $64 on Friday. In London, Brent crude traded above $70 for the first time since December 2014.
Their optimism is based on indisputable facts.
Trump’s Interior Secretary Proposes Selling Offshore Drilling Leases Starting in 2019
- Saturday, 06 January 2018 06:21
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 5, 2018:
One of the usual suspects
President Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was very careful in announcing his agency’s next step in expanding energy development to include the United States’ offshore reserves. He knew that environmentalists and far-left politicians would attack his plan and did what he could to placate them in advance. Said Zinke:
Dow Smashes Through 25,000; to Smash Dems in November?
- Friday, 05 January 2018 06:44
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 4, 2018:
The surprising thing about the Dow’s volcanic eruption through the 25,000 level on Thursday is that it was matched by all-time highs in other key stock market indexes such as the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ, and the Russell 2000. Even more surprising is that this isn’t happening in an American vacuum: Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average hit a new 26-year high, rising above 23,000 for the first time since January 1992. The Hang Seng (Hong Kong) Index just touched a new 10-year high, while major stock market indexes in New Zealand, the Philippines, and Thailand also set new records on Thursday.
The reasons why aren’t surprising:
Dakota Access Pipeline Fulfilling Its Promise
- Tuesday, 02 January 2018 05:58
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 1, 2018:
Fully operational since June, the Dakota Access Pipeline is lowering transportation costs, reducing tank car usage, reducing environmental and population risk, improving North Dakota’s financial condition, and putting the lie to the alarmist anti-pipeline propaganda.
There’s scarcely a downside.
Obama Fracking Rule to be Overturned by BLM in January
- Saturday, 30 December 2017 07:17
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 29, 2017:
Part of the Permian Basin in west Texas
A federal appeals court refused on Wednesday to reconsider its decision to overturn an Obama administration rule on fracking, holding that the issue was moot: The Trump administration is planning to throw out the rule altogether in January.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said that the Obama administration’s rule “unnecessarily burdens industry compliance costs and information requirements that are duplicative of regulatory programs of many states and some tribes. As a result, we are proposing to rescind, in its entirety, the [Obama administration’s] 2015 final rule.”
The original decision in 2016 ruled that the Obama administration was guilty of federal overreach,
The Permian Basin is Driving Another Nail into OPEC’s Coffin
- Saturday, 30 December 2017 07:00
- 0 Comments
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, December 29, 2017:
English: Pumpjack east of Andrews, TX
Just a few years ago, the Permian Basin was considered nearly depleted. But with the advent of fracking technology, the enormous basin – called a “super basin” – could now contain two trillion barrels of recoverable crude oil. That is more than the reserves of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil field and all of Venezuela’s proven reserves put together. IHS Markit, the world leader in information gathering and analysis, just announced that the Permian Basin’s production exceeded its previous high registered back in 1973, producing a record 815 million barrels of oil in 2017. It estimates that its daily production will approach 3 million barrels a day (mbd) next year, which will set another record of a billion barrels produced in single year.
This far exceeds the requirements for any oil basin to quality as a “super basin”: 5 billion in reserves and 5 billion in accumulated production. It also far exceeds the reserves of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil field (265 billion) and those of Venezuela (300 billion).
It’s also a “disrupter,” according to Pete Stark, a director of IHS: “When we consider the impact on the world’s crude markets, the Permian has to be considered a global disrupter.” IHS’ Reed Olmstead added:
Crude Oil Price Outlook: Back to the ’40s?
- Wednesday, 27 December 2017 06:23
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 26, 2017:
The same day that OPEC announced it would be extending its production cut agreement through the end of next year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that U.S. crude oil production jumped an astonishing 290,000 barrels per day from August levels.
Oil traders yawned and drove the price of crude higher. After all, it was a one-month spike, and compliance among both OPEC members and non-members remained surprisingly high. The agreement was taking crude oil off the market faster than producers were adding it. Voila! Increased demand coupled with decreased supply equals higher prices. Futures moved higher with Brent (prices set in London) moving past $62 a barrel with West Texas Intermediate (WTI, prices set in Cushing, Oklahoma) approaching $60.
Those traders were happy to ignore the increase in rig counts in the United States, and the more than 1,000 new horizontal wells being developed as a result — the highest seen since March 2015.
But all three official observers of the world’s crude oil market had a surprise waiting:
Opening ANWR to Energy Development May Be Too Late
- Friday, 22 December 2017 12:20
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 20, 2017:
Part of the motivation by Republicans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to energy development — off limits for nearly 40 years thanks to environmental extremists and the Obama administration — is to use lease fees to offset the deficits in the tax reform bill.
The numbers coming from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) are impressive. Leasing even a tiny part of the tiny part that “Section 1002” represents of the total ANWR acreage would produce $2.2 billion in revenues over the next 10 years, to be split evenly between Alaska and the federal government.
Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said in a speech on the floor of the Senate late Tuesday night that
IEA: United States to Dominate World Energy Market Within Eight Years
- Thursday, 16 November 2017 06:42
- 0 Comments
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 15, 2017:
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the growth of energy production in the United States, doubling as it has in just the last eight years, is expected to double again in the next eight. Authors of the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook report released on Tuesday could hardly contain their surprise: “A remarkable ability to unlock new resources cost-effectively pushes combined United States oil and gas output to a level 50% higher than any other country ever managed; already a net exporter of [natural] gas, the U.S. becomes a net exporter of oil in the late 2020s. In our projections … the rise in US tight oil output [fracking] from 2010 to 2025 would match the highest maintained period of oil output growth by a single country in the history of oil markets.”
The U.S. production increase makes up an astonishing
Latest Comments