Energy News Beat
Daily Standup Top Stories
Is driving electric now more expensive than petrol or diesel?
Britain’s public charging network is facing criticism for high costs, making electric vehicle (EV) driving potentially twice as expensive as using petrol or diesel cars. The UK now has over 12,500 rapid and ultra-rapid charging […]
Austria election brings into focus Russian gas addiction
The government that takes power in Austria after next Sunday’s (29 September) general election will face growing pressure to diversify its energy supply away from dependence on Russian gas, just as the economy is […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:56 – Is driving electric now more expensive than petrol or diesel?
03:05 – Austria election brings into focus Russian gas addiction
06:26 – California sues Exxon over global plastic pollution
10:29 – Market Updates
14:03 – Outro
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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Michael Tanner: [00:00:10] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into the Tuesday, September 24th, 2024, edition of the Daily Energy News. Beat Stand up. Here are today’s top headlines. First up, is driving electric now more expensive than petrol or diesel? This is a great little article out of the UK. We’ll stay abroad. Austria election brings into focus Russian gas addiction. Ooh, crazy. Then we’ll come back to our favorite state. California Sues Exxon over Global Plastic Pollution. Unbelievable. I will then quickly finish off and talk all things oil and gas finance guys, as always. I am Michael Tanner. Stu is out on assignment, so I am rocking a solo show [00:00:56][45.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:00:56] So let’s go ahead and kick it off. First up here is driving electric now more expensive than petrol or diesel? This is actually a study that came out of England. Britain’s public charging network is I’m going to read straight from the article here is facing criticisms for high costs, making the EV driving potentially twice as expensive as using petrol or diesel cars on a year over year basis. UK has actually added about 12 2500 rapid and quote unquote ultra rapid charging stations, which is about a 40% increase year over year, according to some data that was shared with the Times. These chargers cost an average of 80 pounds per kilowatt hour, which makes it extremely difficult for people who don’t have access to a low cost home charging network to actually make the switch. So just like in the United States, where we spend all of this money to build out infrastructure that nobody uses. They build out all this rapid charging infrastructure. And now guess what? You can’t use it because it’s so expensive. What’s even funnier is, according to that same report, even those using the slower public chargers may pay more per mile than petrol or diesel. [00:02:07][71.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:02:07] I mean, guys, here’s the thing. The reason why gasoline and fossil fuels are currently dominating the market is because they’re so efficient. It’s the lowest cost, most efficient fuel. It’s not just the lowest cost. It’s not just the most efficient. It’s lowest cost combined with the most efficient. That’s what everybody looks for. So the market will gravitate towards things that work. People in the UK want to use EVs. They’d love nothing more. We know. We know how they are up here in the UK. I’m sorry if anybody’s listening to this from the UK, but we you know, you guys, these are definitely a little bit more left leaning than us here in the States. So we know you want to use EVs. The problem is you can’t because there are unfortunately too expensive or they do take too much time. I love to call Ultra rapid. It’s like, shit, takes what, 20 minutes to charge? So they’re dying over in the UK due to these EVs. And again, I think you’re going to, you know, something that you and I have talked about. I think you’re going to see people continue to move between hybrids, which gives you a little bit of best of both worlds. [00:03:05][57.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:03:05] Let’s move on to the next one. Austria election brings into focus a Russian gas addiction. This one’s interesting. So they have an election coming up here on September 29th. And one of the biggest I would say, issues right now in this election is where they’re getting their gas. This general election and I’ll read straight from the article, is facing growing pressure on both sides of the political aisle to diversify its energy supply away from its dependance on Russian gas. Just as the economy is stuck in reverse gear. I’ll continue on here. No party is expected to win enough seats to win an outright majority. Opinion polls give a slim lead to the opposition far right Russian friendly Freedom Party. And the result could influence the speed of a so-called energy transition. Here’s a quote from Stefan Schmemann. Buchan is a senior economist for the Australian Institute of Economic Research. Other countries aren’t happy. Austria is still consuming such large volumes of Russian gas. If you guys remember, the EU committed to phasing out Russian gas by 2027 after the invasion of the Ukraine. But you know, even with that pledge, 83% of Austrian gas was still being imported via Russia. To give a comparison to the rest of the EU, only 15% of gas imported was from Russia. So it’s pretty unbelievable. They they’re saying, hey, we want the low, we want the lowest cost energy. I mean, they need it. Opinion polls do show that FPO support at around 27 to 29%, which it’s lead slipping to as little as one point over OVP, with three parties forecasted to win close to 10% or more. The FPO, which is that conservative leaning party, says that Russia, quote, Russian gas must remain part of Austrian energy mix. And they say there’s another little quote here. Okay, here we go. Chancellor Karl Nehme Heimer, he’s The Australian’s People Party, has pledged to win the quarter of Russian gas. The high dependance on Russian gas supplies is a major economic security risk for Austria. Hey, I mean, you’re probably right from that standpoint. The ministry said in a statement, is therefore essential for our country to seek further reduce gas consumption and stop buying Russian gas. Well, the question is, okay, where are they going to diversify from? They noted that there’s much more Norway gas that they could take, which would be a great boon for Norway. Clearly, they’re going to continue to start drilling up that North Sea. So it goes to tell you, having diversification is great. You never want to be blending on one on on one person or one import for your oil. I mean, China imports from anywhere. India imports from everywhere. You always want to make sure you are not you don’t have a choke point or you’re dependent on one person. So again, do I think they should wean themselves off Russian gas? I don’t know. You should have multiple people. You shouldn’t have 85% of your gas from one country, whether it’s Russian or not. You probably should need to wean that down a little bit. The problem is some analysis from the former utility head of regulator E Control, Walter Bolts says that a 20 or a sudden stop to Russian supplies would likely book a wholesale gas price by about 20% for 2 to 6 months. So that’s a decent amount. If you’re middle to lower income Austrian, that’s a significant if for six months, that’s a prolonged period. They’re obviously dealing with inflation. So Austria is in a upper creek without a pattern is going to be interesting to see what happened. The election. We will be closely following it. [00:06:25][200.1]
Michael Tanner: [00:06:26] Let’s move on to the next one, though. California sues Exxon over global plastic pollution. This one’s pretty unbelievable, folks. So California and several environmental groups sued ExxonMobil on Monday and accused the oil giant of engaging in a decades long campaign that helped fuel plastic waste pollution. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who spoke at an event, guess what? Climate Week in New York City, said that the state sued Exxon after concluding a nearly two year long investigation where he says that Exxon has been deliberately misleading the public about the limitations of recycling. This all specifically centers around Exxon’s promotion of what they were calling, quote unquote, advanced recycling, which is a process called Pro Lois’s. I don’t know, guys. I’m not an English major here. All I know is that this process turns hard to recycle plastics into fuel. He said that this technology, slow progress, is a sign of Exxon’s ongoing deception. Unbelievable. The technology, slow progress is a sign of Exxon’s ongoing deception. Well, maybe it’s a hard problem to solve. Has this dude ever gotten out of his little comfy ag office to figure that out, or is he too busy hobnobbing on his private jet that he flew over to New York City to talk it, quote unquote, Climate Week, where they have the A.C. cranked up and are probably using Russian gas to do that. I mean, it’s just dripping in irony. All of this. Here’s the quote from our good friend Bonta AG over there. Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades long deception. Well, I thought it was just a two year long deception over this advanced fuels thing. But we’ll get to that. And we are asking the court to uphold Exxon’s fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis to its campaign of deception. Here’s here’s Exxon’s response. It’s a good one, actually. Suing people makes headlines, but solving the plastic waste problem won’t advance. Recycling is a real solution. Has an addict adding that California has done nothing to advance cause like which is true. They’ve done nothing to do that. So this again, is political retribution because this is not like ExxonMobil. And I mean, this does Exxon even have facilities in California? I know Chevron does. It just it just boggles my mind that with all the craziness going on in California, everything that’s going on, the craziness that’s going on in California, this dude assigned his staff to try to sue ExxonMobil. And guess what? Newsflash, you ain’t going to win because Exxon is going to have just a few more resources than you have to fight this. And again, you’re you can’t win here. You can’t win here. Exxon, if they don’t care about recycling and just continue to produce oil, well, they’re going to you know, they’ll hit them on the climate change front. But if they actually try to do something, this advanced plastics problem, which I it’s hard. I mean, recycling stuff because newsflash and I’m pointing at the camera, you guys don’t separate your recycling properly enough if you the listener, actually separated your recycling better, Maybe this stuff works, but you don’t. Okay, so what? So they’re trying. Well, maybe there’s some hard to recycle stuff. Or maybe there’s a mixture. Let’s figure out a way to actually recycle it. Then they get burned for that because it’s a quote unquote, deceptive process. It’s unbelievable. It’s why you should in my opinion, if I was running it, I wouldn’t even worry about. Sure, let them sue us. It’s a write off that we get. Well, we’ll hire some lawyers there. I mean, there’s other stuff going on. I mean, we know the stuff that’s going on in West Texas in there fundamentally, and their fundamental disregard for the ability to plug old wells. I mean, they should be focused on that stuff, which is actually harming the environment versus this, we’re actually trying to do that. I mean, it’s unbelievable. This stuff gets me worked up, you know, I guess environment. You know, you’re going to read this article. Environmental groups Praise the lawsuit. Oceans plastic campaign directors in California’s lawsuit will hold the industry accountable and debunk the plastic recycling narrative that holds us back from real solutions. You know what? I want to debunk your Oceana stuff. That’s Kristy. That’s what I want to do. So just just unbelievable. [00:10:29][242.7]
Michael Tanner: [00:10:29] I’m going to move on before I get to worked up. Let’s move into finance, guys. Before we do that, as always, we got to pay the bills. Thank you for checking us out on the world’s greatest website. www.energynewsbeat.com. The best place for all your energy, oil and gas news. Stu and the team do a tremendous job making sure that website stays up to speed. Everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas business. Go ahead and hit the description below for all the links, the types of links to the articles, and check us out on substack The energy news be a substack.com and you can also check us out and invest in oil dot energy news beat if you are interested in on our exclusive direct working interest project that we are really excited to be partnering with the team over at Pecos Country operating again that’s invest in oil dot energy news be.com. [00:11:12][42.6]
Michael Tanner: [00:11:13] Pretty wild day for the oil markets and it will start overall the S&P 500 up about 2/10 of a percentage point. Nasdaq up about three quarters of a percentage point excuse me, 3/10 of a percentage point. Man, really off there. A two year yields down a half a percentage point. Ten year yields Absolutely. Flat dollar index basically flat, maybe up a 10th of a percentage point. Bitcoin was down about a quarter of a percentage point, but still $62,145. Crude oil after a wild swing was up on the overnight trading session to about 7165 spiked briefly up to about 170 or about 7171. It then took an absolute tumble all the way down to 69, 65. But as we record this here at about 230 here on the 23rd, it stands at about 7045, such down about three quarters of a percentage point. Brant Oil is actually up three, a quarter of a percentage point day over day. Natural gas up eight percentage points after. Again, we’ll get to kind of why natural gas is up for that reason. And then we did see the actual PE contract, which is our EMP stocks, our basket of EMP stocks. It was basically flat up about 0.05 percentage points. I mean, oil and gas prices really swinging mainly due to the fact that there’s a new hurricane that looks horrible, that sweeping through the Gulf. Most of the production will end up being shut down. So I think some of that price action, what you’re seeing specifically on the natural gas is due to that, but $2.60 gas. I mean, if that if there’s something more to this, which again, it’s a lot of the storm worries. So I don’t want to say, this is a movement to the upside. We are hopefully moving into the winter season where maybe we see a little bit shift in gas prices. So but we will see what happens after this hurricane. We hope everybody and our and our oilfield workers out there in the Gulf of Mexico stay safe. We really we really hope that it was interesting to see we did see euro business activity, quote unquote, contract sharply and unexpectedly this month in which was kind of not picked up on by the street. We did see. Here’s Dennis Keisler, senior vice president of Trading Bulk Financial. Disappointing economic numbers blowing from China along with a surprise slowdown in European manufacturing is placing crude demand at its lowest levels so far this year. Not not good supply. Concerns also stemming from the ongoing Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah has also helped support oil prices. I mean, it could be continuing to go crazy here in terms of what could happen. We also did hear on on on Monday from Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee or Goolsbee, whatever his name is, quote unquote. He said many more rate cuts over the next year as banks central bank seek a soft landing for the economy. So and you can see it up on my backside there on CNBC. So it looks like there are things happening there. So who knows? Folks, I don’t want to come out and say, look, it’s ready. It’s not ready. But right there, you know, we could see a lot more rate cuts, which could be interesting. [00:14:02][168.9]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:03] That’s really all I’ve got, though. Everything else on on on oil was was pretty flat. Pretty, pretty chill. There were some interesting Twitter stuff going on. You know, it looks like there’s rumors of a gearing up for a specific some M&A action. So we will be covering all that and a bag of chips as it comes through, guys. But with that, I’m going to let you get out of here, get back to work. Start your day. Sure. Will be rocking a solo show tomorrow. I will be back in the chair for the Thursday show to help wrap this whole thing up, guys. So I will see you Thursday. Say, say hi to you tomorrow. We’ll see you then. [00:14:03][0.0][828.5]
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