Tag Archives: Oil

News

Does Joe Biden oppose fracking? Will he shut down the oil and gas industries?

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Far-left CNN fact-checks Joe Biden on fracking
Far-left CNN fact-checks Joe Biden on fracking

A very interesting thing happened after the debate on Thursday. Far-left CNN decided to fact-check Trump’s claim that Biden said on video that he wanted to ban fracking. Far-left CNN ruled Trump’s statement “correct”. During the debate, Biden also admitted that he wanted to eliminate all fossil fuel usage, including cars that use gas. Let’s take a look at Biden’s exact words.

Here’s the CNN fact check:

The Federalist reports:

Despite Biden and his vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s insistence that Biden never said he opposed fracking, Biden has repeatedly condemned fracking and the fossil fuels industry.

“We would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated,” Biden said about coal and fracking from the Democratic presidential debate stage just a few months ago.

“We are going to get rid of fossil fuels,” he also promised from the podium at a New Hampshire rally.

Harris, a proud co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, which would ban fracking, has also been vocal about her position.

Regarding shutting down the oil and gas industries, The Federalist reports:

Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden admitted during Thursday night’s final presidential debate that he going to end the oil industry if elected president.

“Would you close down the oil industry?” President Donald Trump pressed just before their closing statements.

“I would transition from the oil industry, yes,” Biden replied.

When asked by debate moderator Kristen Welker to clarify his statement, Biden claimed that he wants to shut down the oil industry because it “pollutes significantly” and needs to be “replaced by renewable energy over time.”

There are many problems with renewable energies, and you can find out all about them by looking at places that have tried to switch over to those energy sources.

Switching to Renewable Energy

Let’s start with California. California has long been at the forefront of converting their energy production to “green” sources.

Here’s an article from Forbes that talks about their results:

At the Democratic National Convention this week, presidential and vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will make the case for spending $2 trillion, or $500 billion per year, to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels toward renewables like solar and wind.

[…]California’s big bet on renewables, and shunning of natural gas and nuclear, is directly responsible for the state’s blackouts and high electricity prices.

“We will be forced today to ask utilities to cut off power to millions today, and tomorrow, and beyond,” said Stephen Berberich, the President and CEO of California’s Independent System Operator, CAISO, on a Monday morning conference call. “Demand will greatly exceed supply.”

The immediate cause of California’s blackouts is a mismatch between electricity supply and demand.

[…]The underlying reason blackouts are occurring is because California lacks reliable, in-state supply. And the reason for that is California has been closing both natural gas and nuclear power plants.

[…]Despite these capacity shortfalls, the state is moving ahead with plans to remove 2,200-MW of reliable electricity from the grid.  That’s the amount of power produced by Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which will be closed in stages in 2024 and 2025.

So, Green New Deal works great… if your goal is to feel good about yourself, and make emotion-driven people like you. But it isn’t very good at generating an abundance of low-cost electricity to power businesses. And it isn’t very good for poor people, who prefer to pay less for their electricity.

Well, how about Germany? They closed down their nuclear power plants in favor of wind and solar. It didn’t work.

Daily Caller explains:

Germany’s power grid almost collapsed in January due to poor performance from wind turbines and solar panels, according to data from a major trade union.

Wind and solar power plants under-performed in January, 2017, because of cloudy weather with little or no wind, setting the stage for massive blackouts.

[…]Green energy approaches failed to meet Germany’s stated energy goals, even after spending over $1.1 trillion. The country’s “Energiewende” plan to boost wind and solar production to fight global warming hasn’t significantly reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and may have actually caused them to go up.

[…]Due to the inherent unreliable performance of wind power and political opposition to nuclear power plants, Germany has been forced to return to coal to generate electricity. Coal now provides 44 percent of  Germany’s power,  This shift caused Germany’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to actually rise by 28 million tons each year following the policy shift.

All of Germany’s subsidies and support for green energy have sharply increased power prices, with the average German paying 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. The average American only spends 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour by comparison.

So, you get less electricity produced, more emissions, and elctricity prices go up. Just like in California.

Well, third try is the charm. How about Canada? They’ve gone Green New Deal for more than a decade. How is that working for them?

The National Post reported this in 2016:

Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices offered to wind, solar and other renewable industry players, jobs and growth would boom and Ontario would be free of its dirty coal plants. It was the End of Coal, the government said. The birth of a renewable miracle.

Now, Canadians are paying more:

The doubling of electricity prices since 2005 is big politically, but it is just the top-line item on a long list of problems, misconceptions and outright fabrications that lurk within the Liberal government’s decade-long pursuit of radical greenism.

Because they didn’t listened to engineers… they listened to their hearts:

Ontario’s Society of Professional Engineers has issued more than half a dozen critical reports on the Liberals’ tendency to let green talk and politics override sound policy. Instead of following the expert advice of engineers and people who understand the intricacies of electricity production and distribution, the government took to issuing directives right out the Premier’s office.

Now, I know some people on the secular left are going to disagree with these facts. But they don’t have facts to counter these facts. There isn’t a single country that has gone Green New Deal that has lower electricity prices and a net increase in jobs.

We have to do what works. What works is more natural gas (fracking) and more nuclear power.

News

Socialist party wins majority in Canada’s most conservative province

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Orange = NDP, Green = Wildrose, Blue = Conservative
Orange = NDP, Green = Wildrose, Blue = Conservative

This article from Reuters explains what happened.

It says:

The left-wing New Democrats won election in the Canadian province of Alberta on Tuesday, ending the 44-year run by the Progressive Conservatives amid promises to review oversight of the oil and gas sector in the home of Canada’s oil sands.

At the end of a month-long campaign, the New Democratic Party (NDP), which has never held more than 16 seats in the 87-seat provincial legislature, will lead a majority government. It held a commanding lead in early results, leading or elected in 54 seats at 9 p.m. local time while the Conservatives were ahead in just 13, according to CBC TV.

The NDP is expected to be far less accommodative to the Western Canadian province’s powerful energy industry.

NDP Premier-elect Rachel Notley has proposed reduced support for pipeline export projects and a review of oil and gas royalties in the resource-rich province, and energy shares on Canadian stock markets are expected to react negatively to her party’s victory.

The NDP had promised to hike corporate tax rates by two percentage points to 12 percent if elected, but its promise to review the amount of royalty payments due the province from oil and gas production made some investors nervous.

Alberta’s oil sands are the largest source of U.S. oil imports.

The Conservatives had won 12 straight elections, but support for rookie Premier Jim Prentice plunged during the campaign and right-wing voters split support between the Conservatives and the younger, more conservative Wildrose Party, which appeared on track to be the official opposition.

The Alberta “Progressive Conservatives” are almost as leftist as the NDP. The only real conservatives in Alberta are the Wildrose.

This Canadian Press looks at specific NDP policies:

The NDP have won a majority in Alberta. What could Alberta look like moving forward? Leader Rachel Notley campaigned on having the wealthy pay more to fund better health care and education. Here’s a look at some of the party’s key platform planks:

— A Resource Owners’ Rights Commission to review the royalties oil companies pay to the province with any amount earned above the current rates going into savings.

— A boost in the corporate tax rate to 12 per cent from 10 per cent and an increase in the minimum wage to $15 and hour by 2018.

— More tax brackets on high earners than the Tories are proposing: A 12 per cent tax rate on income between $125,000 to $150,000; 13 per cent on income between $150,000 to $200,000; 14 per cent between $200,000 and $300,000 and 15 per cent over $300,000. The NDP also plans to roll back the Tory health levy.

— The creation of 2,000 long-term care spaces over four years.

— A ban both corporate and union donations to political parties.

That last one looks like a conservative policy, since big corporations and unions are both leftist. So there’s a silver lining to this cloud. I’m sorry for my Canadian friends who will have to live with this, but the mistake was made last election, when they chose the Progressive Conservatives over Wildrose. One thing is for sure, Alberta supplies a lot of our oil here, so this NDP win will raise oil prices, and it’s going to put pressure on American families. Maybe we should be drilling for our own oil?

News

Eight predictions for 2015

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These are from The Federalist.

The list:

  1. The oil stimulus
  2. The EPA’s war on energy
  3. The Supreme Court gets another shot at ObamaCare
  4. Republicans will have just enough power to fight over it
  5. Will anyone challenge Hillary?
  6. A police rebellion
  7. Russia will be in trouble and will be trouble
  8. Did anybody tell the enemy the war is over?

Here’s the one I want to highlight, because it’s the one that concerns me most, at least until we get a Republican President:

7) Russia will be in trouble and will be trouble.

One of the most enjoyable consequences of the oil price collapse is seeing how it takes the wind out of the sails of a whole collection of evil regimes.

Oil is the dictators’ best friend. It is a steady source of revenue that can be maintained and controlled by the government, often with the help of foreign subcontractors, even when government controls, corruption, and cronyism have crushed the rest of the economy. So a collapse in the price of oil is a disaster for the bad guys.

Nobody is getting hit worse than the regime in Venezuela, which is now on the verge of defaulting on its debt. Since Venezuela has been a big economic sponsor of the regime in Cuba, you can see how a Venezuelan collapse will affect Cuba—and may well be the reason the Castros are seeking a lifeline from President Obama.

But the big geopolitical implications will come from the impact of the oil collapse on Russia. For years, the conventional wisdom has been that Europe is dependent on buying Russian oil and gas; now we’re about to see to what extent Russia is dependent on selling its oil and gas to Europe.

The downside is, as Megan McArdle puts it, “Russia’s Problems Are Everyone’s Problems.” “[T]he world is about to experience a major financial crisis in a country that seems to deal with its internal troubles by slicing off bits of neighboring countries.” Like its leader, Vladimir Putin, Russia is a country with a Napoleon complex: the smaller and weaker it gets, the more belligerent it becomes, as a form of overcompensation.

But shirtless macho posturing only gets you so far when you don’t have the cash to back it up. There is some speculation that a financial crisis could lead to defections in Russia’s “near abroad,” its ring of former Soviet republics and fellow kleptocracies. Then there’s the fact that Putin’s aggression has permanently alienated Ukraine, which is now taking steps toward joining NATO. Meanwhile, the Baltic states are increasing their defense budgets. One hopes that other European nations will follow, at a time when Russia is not in a position to match their spending.

I think Russia is weak enough that Putin would slink away with his tail between his legs, if we had an American leader with the guts to call his bluff. But that’s not going to happen, so in 2015, look for a volatile mix of greater belligerence and diminished capability.

When I hear about the collapse of the Russian currency, it makes me worry that we could a lot of scary scenarios as Putin tries to hold his state together.