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As the Biden administration and governments worldwide make massive commitments to rapidly decarbonize the global economy, the persistent effort to silence climate change skeptics is intensifying – and the critics keep pushing back.

This summer the International Monetary Fund summarily canceled a presentation by John Clauser, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who publicly disavows the existence of a climate “crisis.” The head of the nonprofit with which Clauser is affiliated, the CO2 Coalition, has said he and other members have been delisted from LinkedIn for their dissident views.

Meanwhile, a top academic journal retracted published research doubting a climate emergency after negative coverage in legacy media. The move was decried by another prominent climate dissenter, Roger Pielke Jr., as “one of the most egregious failures of scientific publishing that I have seen” – criticism muffled because the academic says he has been blocked on Twitter (now X) by reporters on the climate beat.

The climate dissenters are pressing their case as President Biden, United Nations officials, and climate action advocates in media and academia argue that the “settled science” demands a wholesale societal transformation. That means halving U.S. carbon emissions by 2035 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050 to stave off the “existential threat” of human-induced climate change.

In response last month, more than 1,600 scientists, among them two Nobel physics laureates, Clauser and Ivar Giaever of Norway, signed a declaration stating that there is no climate emergency, and that climate advocacy has devolved into mass hysteria. The skeptics say the radical transformation of entire societies is marching forth without a full debate, based on dubious scientific claims amplified by knee-jerk journalism.

Many of these climate skeptics reject the optimistic scenarios of economic prosperity promised by advocates of a net-zero world order. They say the global emissions-reduction targets are not achievable on such an accelerated timetable without lowering living standards and unleashing worldwide political unrest.

“What advocates of climate action are trying to do is scare the bejesus out of the public so they’ll think we need to [act] fast,” said Steven Koonin, author of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”

“You have to balance the certainties and uncertainties of the changing climate – the risks and hazards – against many other factors,” he adds.

These dissenters don’t all agree on all scientific questions and do not speak in a single voice. Clauser, for example, is a self-styled “climate denialist” who believes climate is regulated by clouds, while Pielke, a political scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Bjørn Lomborg, the former director of the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, acknowledge humans are affecting the climate but say there is sufficient time to adapt. The dissenters do, however, agree that the public and government officials are getting a one-sided, apocalyptic account that stokes fear, politicizes science, misuses climate modeling, and shuts down debate.

They also say it is a troubling sign for scientific integrity that they are systematically sidelined and diminished by government funding agencies, foundation grant-makers, academic journals, and much of the media. Delving into their claims, RealClearInvestigations reviewed a sampling of their books, articles, and podcast interviews. This loose coalition of writers and thinkers acknowledges that the climate is warming, but they typically ascribe as much, if not more, influence to natural cycles and climate variability than to human activities, such as burning fossil fuel.

Among their arguments:

• There is no climate crisis or existential threat as expressed in catastrophic predictions by activists in the media and academia. As global temperatures gradually increase, human societies will need to make adjustments in the coming century, just as societies have adapted to earlier climate changes. By and large, humans cannot control the climate, which Pielke describes as “the fanciful idea that emissions are a disaster control knob.”

• Global temperatures are increasing incrementally, and have been for centuries, but the degree of human influence is uncertain or negligible. Climate skeptics themselves don’t agree on how much humans are contributing to global warming by burning fossil fuels, and how much is caused by natural variability from El Niño and other cycles that can take centuries to play out. “The real question is not whether the globe has warmed recently,” writes Koonin, “but rather to what extent this warming is being caused by humans.”

• Rapidly replacing fossil fuels with renewables and electricity by mid-century would be economically risky and may have a negligible effect on global warming. Some say mitigation decrees – such as phasing out the combustion engine and banning gas stoves – are not likely to prevent climate change because humans play a minor role in global climate trends. Others say mitigation is necessary but won’t happen without capable replacement technologies. It’s unrealistic, they say, to force societies to rely on intermittent energy from wind and solar, or wager the future on technologies that are still in experimental stages.

• The global political push to kill the fossil fuel industry to get to “net zero” and “carbon neutrality” by 2050, as advocated by the United Nations and the Biden administration, will erase millions of jobs and raise energy costs, leading to a prolonged economic depression and political instability. The result would be that developing regions will pay the highest price, while the biggest polluters (China and India) and hostile nations (like Russia and Iran) will simply ignore the net-zero mandate. This could be a case where the cure could be worse than the disease.

• Despite the common refrain in the media, there is no evidence that a gradually warming planet is affecting the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, storms, droughts, rainfall, or other weather events. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has expressed low confidence such weather events can be linked to human activities. Still, “it is a fertile field for cherry pickers,” notes Pielke.

• Extreme weather events, such as wildfires and flooding, are not claiming more human lives than previously. The human death toll is largely caused by cold weather, which accounts for eight times as many deaths as hot weather, and overall weather-related mortality has fallen by about 99% in the past century. “People are safer from climate-related disasters than ever before,” statistician and author Bjørn Lomborg has said.

• Climate science has been hijacked and politicized by activists, creating a culture of self-censorship that’s enforced by a code of silence that Koonin likens to the Mafia’s omerta. In her 2023 book, “Climate Uncertainty and Risk,” climatologist Judith Curry asks: “How many skeptical papers were not published by activist editorial boards? How many published papers have buried results in order to avoid highlighting findings that conflict with preferred narratives? I am aware of anecdotal examples of each of these actions, but the total number is unknowable.”

• Slogans such as “follow the science” and “scientific consensus” are misleading and disingenuous. There is no consensus on many key questions, such as the urgency to cease and desist burning fossil fuels, or the accuracy of computer modeling predictions of future global temperatures. The apparent consensus of imminent disaster is manufactured through peer pressure, intimidation, and research funding priorities, based on the conviction that “noble lies,” “consensus entrepreneurship,” and “stealth advocacy” are necessary to save humanity from itself. “One day PhD dissertations will be written about our current moment of apocalyptic panic,” Pielke predicts.

• The warming of the planet is a complicated phenomenon that will cause some disruptions but will also bring benefits, particularly in agricultural yields and increased vegetation. Some climate skeptics, including the CO2 Coalition, say CO2 is not a pollutant – it is “plant food.”

Curry, the former Chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expresses a common theme among the climate refuseniks: that they are the sane, rational voices in a maelstrom of quasi-religious mania.

“In the 1500s, they used to drown witches in Europe because they blamed them for bad weather. You had the pagan people trying to appease the gods with sacrifices,” Curry said. “What we’re doing now is like a pseudoscientific version of that, and it’s no more effective than those other strategies.’

The climate change establishment occasionally concedes some of these points. No less an authority than the newly appointed head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has urged the climate community to cool its jets: “If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” Jim Skea recently said to German media. “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees [centigrade]. It will however be a more dangerous world.”

In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee in June, Pielke said human-caused climate change is real and “poses significant risks to society and the environment.” But the science does not paint a dystopian, catastrophic scenario of imminent doom, he added.

“Today, there is general agreement that our current media environment and political discourse are rife with misinformation,” Pielke testified. “If there is just one sentence that you take from my testimony today it is this: You are being misinformed.”

Still, the overwhelming impression conveyed is one of impending disaster, with the menace of global warming rhetorically upgraded in July by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to “global boiling.” Climate scientists announced in July that the planet is the hottest it’s been in 120,000 years, an old claim that gets recycled every few years. Meanwhile, three vice-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of mass starvation, extinction, and disasters, saying that if the temperature rises 1.5â„ƒ above pre-industrial levels, “children under 12 will experience a fourfold increase in natural disasters in their lifetime, and up to 14% of all species assessed will likely face a very high risk of extinction.”

Many of these predictions are based on computer models and computer simulations that Pielke, Koonin, Curry, and others have decried as totally implausible. Koonin’s book suggests that some computer models may be “cooking the books” to achieve desired outcomes, while Pielke has decried faulty scenarios as “one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the twenty-first century thus far.” Curry writes in her book that the primary inadequacy of climate models is their limited ability to predict the kinds of natural climate fluctuations that cause ice ages and warming periods, and play out over decades, centuries, or even millennia.

Another critique is the use of computer models to correlate extreme weather events to multi-decade climate trends in an attempt to show that the weather was caused by climate, a branch of climate science called climate attribution studies. This type of research is used to bolster claims that the frequency and intensity of heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events could not have happened without climate change. An example is research recently cited by the BBC in an article warning that if the global temperature rises another 0.9 centigrade, crippling heat waves that were once exceedingly rare will bake the world every two-to-five years.

One question looms: Does a warming climate contribute to heat records and heat waves, such as those that were widely reported in July as the hottest month on record and taken as overwhelming proof that humans are overheating the planet? The United States experienced extreme heat waves in the 1930s, and the recent spikes are not without precedent, climate dissenters say. Pielke, however, concedes that IPCC data signal that increases in heat extremes and heat waves are virtually certain, but he argues that the societal impacts will be manageable.

Koonin and Curry say that the global heat spikes in July were likely caused by a multiplicity of factors, including an underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic explosion last year that increased upper atmosphere water vapor by about 10%, a relevant fact because water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas. Another factor is the warming effect of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which has shifted to an active phase recently.

Koonin says that greenhouse gas emissions are a gradual trend on which weather anomalies play out, and while it’s tempting to confuse weather with climate, it would be a mistake to blame July’s heat waves on human influence.

“The anomaly is about as large as we’ve ever seen, but not unprecedented,” Koonin explained on a podcast. “Now, what the real question is, why did it spike so much? Nothing to do with CO2 – CO2 is … the base on which this phenomenon occurs.”

Climate dissent comes with the occupational hazard of being tarred as a propagandist and stooge for “Big Oil.” Pielke was one of seven academics investigated by a U.S. Congressman in 2015 for allegedly failing to report funding from fossil fuel interests (He was cleared). A New York Times review of Lomborg’s 2020 book, “False Alarm,” described it as “mind pollution.”

Climate advocates see climate skepticism as so dangerous that Ben Santer, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, publicly cut ties with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory two years ago after the federal research facility invited Koonin to discuss his skeptical book, “Unsettled.” Santer, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, said allowing Koonin’s views to go unchallenged undermined the credibility and integrity of climate science research. For similar reasons, the IMF postponed Clauser’s July presentation so that it could be rescheduled as a debate.

Another critique: scientists arbitrarily forcing the facts to fit a prescribed catastrophic narrative, often by ignoring plausible alternative explanations and relevant factors. That’s what climate scientist Patrick Brown said he had to do to get published in the prestigious journal Nature, by attributing wildfires to climate change and ignoring other factors, like poor forest management and the startling fact that over 80% of wildfires are ignited by humans. Brown publicly confessed to this sleight-of-hand in a recent article in The Free Press.

“This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers,” Brown wrote. “When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula, my papers were rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for less prestigious outlets.”

These frustrations serve as a reminder that the world has entered what the United Nations and climate advocates call the make-or-break decade that will decide how much the Earth’s temperature will rise above pre-industrial levels. This decisive phase is “unfolding now and will intensify during the next several years,” according to Rice University researchers. “Accordingly, what happens between now and the late 2020s, in all likelihood, will fundamentally determine the failure or success of an accelerated energy transition.”

In response to this call for global action, political leaders in Europe and North America are vowing to reengineer their societies to run on wind, solar, and hydrogen. In this country, California is among a dozen states that have moved to ban the sale of new gasoline-engine cars in 2035, while states like Virginia and North Carolina have committed to carbon-free power grids by mid-century.

In the most detailed net-zero roadmap to date, the International Energy Agency in 2021 identified more than 400 milestones that would have to be met to achieve a net-zero planet by mid-century, including the immediate cessation of oil and gas exploration and drilling, and mandated austerity measures such as reducing highway speed limits, limiting temperature settings in private homes, and eating less meat.

In the IEA’s net zero scenario, global energy use will decline by 8% through energy efficiency even as the world’s population adds 2 billion people and the economy grows a whopping 40%. In this scenario, all the nations of the world – including China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia – would have to commit to a net-zero future, generating 14 million jobs to create a new energy infrastructure. Nearly half the slated emissions reductions will have to come from experimental technologies currently in demonstration or prototype stages, such as hydrogen, bioenergy, carbon capture, and modular nuclear reactors. Reading this bracing outlook, one could almost overlook the IEA’s caveat that relying on solar and wind for nearly 70% of electricity generation would cause retail electricity prices to increase by 50% on average and destroy 5 million jobs, of which “many are well paid, meaning structural changes can cause shocks for communities with impacts that persist over time.”

A critique of the IEA’s scenario issued this year by the Energy Policy Research Foundation, a think tank that specializes in oil, gas, and petroleum products, warned of “massive supply shocks” if oil supplies are artificially suppressed to meet arbitrary net zero targets. The report further stated that “if the world stays committed to net zero regardless of high costs – the recession will turn into an extended depression and ultimately impose radical negative changes upon modern civilization.” (Disclosure: The report was commissioned by the RealClearFoundation, the nonprofit parent of RealClearInvestigations.)

Already, societies have fallen behind their emissions reduction targets, and it’s widely understood that fast-tracking net zero is an unattainable goal. Transforming existing energy infrastructures within several decades would require installing the equivalent of the world’s largest solar farm every day, according to the International Energy Agency. Carbon-free energy accounts for only 18% of total global consumption, and fossil fuels are still increasing, according to a recent analysis. The IEA reported this year that investments in oil exploration and drilling have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, while global coal demand reached an all-time high last year. Globally nations are spending more on clean energy than on fossil fuels, but fossil fuels are still vital to economic growth; for instance, the IEA noted that 40 gigawatts of new coal plants were approved in 2022, the highest figure since 2016, almost all of them in China.

“We live in this world of exaggerated promises and delusional pop science,” Vaclav Smil, the University of Manitoba environmental scientist and policy analyst, told The New York Times last year. “People don’t appreciate the magnitude of the task and are setting up artificial deadlines which are unrealistic.”

A government push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by cutting back on livestock farming has led to public protests in the Netherlands, a conflict over resources that Time magazine predicts will spread elsewhere: “This may be just the beginning of much wider global unrest over agriculture. Scientists say dealing with climate change will require not just gradual reform, but a rapid, wholesale transformation of the global food system.”

Climate dissidents say what happened in the Netherlands is a foretaste of the political backlash that is inevitable when net-zero policies start becoming implemented and people have to travel across state lines to buy a gasoline-powered car.

“The urgency is the stupidest part of the whole thing – that we need to act now with all these made-up targets,” Curry said. “The transition risk is far greater than any conceivable climate or weather risk.”

To Koonin, these challenges indicate that the catastrophic climate narrative will collapse when put to the test of practicality and politics. The more sensible route, he said, is a slow-and-steady approach.

“There’s going to be a deep examination of science and the cost-benefit issues,” he said. “We will eventually do the right thing, but it’s going to take a decade or so.”

Source: Realclearwire.com

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U.S. natural gas output fell to a preliminary 11-month low on Sunday as frigid weather froze wells across the country, while gas demand for heating and power generation was on track to hit record highs.

In Texas the state’s power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), forecast electric demand on Tuesday would top last summer’s all-time high and warned power supplies could fall short on both Monday and Tuesday.

ERCOT on Sunday issued an appeal to the public calling for energy conservation from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. CT (1200-1600 GMT) on Monday.

The operator asked Texas government agencies to implement all programs to reduce energy use at their facilities during that time.

“Operating reserves are expected to be low Monday morning due to continued freezing temperatures, record-breaking demand, unseasonably low wind,” the grid operator said in a statement.

The drop in U.S. gas availability so far this week was the most in over a year, with supplies on track to fall by around 9.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) from Jan. 8-14 to an estimated 11-month low of 98.6 bcfd on Jan. 14, according to data from financial firm LSEG.

That decline so far was small compared with gas supply losses of around 19.6 bcfd during Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, and 20.4 bcfd during the February freeze of 2021.

In North Dakota, oil production was down by an estimated 250,000 to 280,000 barrels per day due to freezing weather, while gas output had fallen by 700 million to 800 million cubic feet per day, according to North Dakota Pipeline Authority.

Electricity supply and demand forecasts can change quickly, however, as power plant availability and weather patterns develop. The February 2021 freeze left millions in Texas without power, water and heat for days and resulted in over 200 deaths as ERCOT scrambled to prevent a grid collapse after an unusually large amount of generation shut.

Some of those power plants shut because they could not access enough gas supplies after frigid temperatures froze wells and other equipment, known in the energy industry as freeze-offs.

U.S. gas demand, including exports, will reach 164.6 bcfd on Jan. 15 and 171.9 bcfd on Jan. 16, according to LSEG.

Those daily demand forecasts would top the current all-time high of 162.5 bcfd set in December 2022 during Winter Storm Elliott, federal energy data from S&P Global Commodities Insights showed.

In Texas, ERCOT forecast power demand would peak at around 85,564 megawatts (MW) on Jan. 16 at around 8 a.m. local time, which would top the current all-time peak of 85,508 MW set in August 2023.

ERCOT estimated power use could top supplies by around 1,000 MW during the mornings of both Jan. 15 and Jan. 16. Those estimates, however, are subject to change and do not account for steps the grid operator may take to boost supplies and reduce demand.

One of the states hardest hit by the freeze over the past few days is Oregon, where roughly 164,000 homes and businesses were without power on Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us.

Portland General Electric POR.N, the state’s biggest power company, said in a post on social media platform X that restoration efforts would continue through the weekend. Portland General had about 126,000 customers still without power at midday on Sunday.

Next-day power prices at the Mid-Columbia (Mid-C) hub EL-PK-MIDC-SNL at the Washington-Oregon border soared to a record high of around $1,075 per megawatt hour (MWh), according to LSEG data going back to 2010.

That compares with Mid-C averages of $81 per MWh in 2023 and $52 from 2018 to 2022.

Northwest Pipeline, which supplies gas to states including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, on Saturday declared force majeure following an outage at a gas storage facility but has since resumed operations, company notices said.

Officials at U.S. energy company Williams Cos WMB.N, the pipeline’s owner, said on Sunday challenges on the pipeline had been resolved and that its transmission systems were continuing to transport scheduled volumes.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino and Laura Sanicola; Additional reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver; Editing by Richard Chang and Diane Craft)

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Hours after targeting a U.S. warship with a cruise missile in the Red Sea, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis fired a missile and struck a U.S.-owned merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden, giving further momentum to the escalation of this conflict.

Early on Monday, the Houthis fired a missile at the Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, the Eagle Gibraltar, hitting the port side of the vessel, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, as reported by the Associated Press.

The vessel has reported no casualties in the incident.

The bulk carrier is owned by Connecticut-based Eagle Bulk, and AP satellite tracking analysis showed the vessel heading for the Suez Canal before it turned around after being attacked.

“All seafarers onboard the vessel are confirmed to be uninjured,” Eagle Bulk said in a statement. “The vessel is carrying a cargo of steel products. Eagle Bulk management is in close contact with all relevant authorities concerning this matter.”

Following the attack, the U.S. Maritime Administration warned U.S.-flagged vessels from sailing near Yemen.

The attack follows on the heels of another attack late on Sunday in which the Houthis targeted the USS Laboon warship.

On Friday, the U.S. began targeting Houthi positions in Yemen with dozens of targeted cruise missile attacks launched from fighter jets, warships and submarines.

Last week, ongoing missile strikes by the Houthis on merchant vessels pushed Brent crude oil prices to $80 briefly as operators increasingly diverted commodities away from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. On Monday, Qatar joined the ranks of those avoiding the Red Sea, announcing it would no longer send its LNG carriers on this route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the coast of Yemen. According to Bloomberg, since Friday, at least five LNG carriers scheduled to traverse the Strait have been halted.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Freezing temperatures have slashed North Dakota’s crude oil production by up to 280,000 barrels per day (bpd) in recent days, according to estimates from the North Dakota Pipeline Authority as of Sunday, reported by Reuters.

Natural gas production in North Dakota also fell, due to the Arctic blast and frigid weather that has settled across much of the United States in recent hours.

Before the dip in crude oil output this weekend, North Dakota was producing around 1.2 million bpd-1.3 million bpd of oil. The all-time high of 1.52 million bpd production was reached in November 2019, just before the pandemic.

The latest available figures, for October, showed that North Dakota’s oil production averaged 1.24 million bpd during that month, slightly down from 1.28 million bpd in September, due to a snowfall in late October that curtailed some production. Most of the oil output, 97%, came from the Bakken and Three Forks formations, per the data from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.

The winter freeze this weekend disrupted oil and natural gas production elsewhere in the United States, too.

Freezing temperatures in much of the United States have frozen gas wells, leading to the drop in production to the lowest in 11 months, per estimates by Reuters.

At the same time, demand for electricity, on the other hand, was heading for a record-high in some states, notably Texas. There, the grid regulator had to issue a conservation call for Monday morning on expectations that demand will break last summer’s record.

“Operating reserves are expected to be low Monday morning due to continued freezing temperatures, record-breaking demand, unseasonably low wind,” ERCOT said in the call.

Demand for electricity in the state with the biggest gas output and the largest wind generation capacity is seen reaching 85.56 gigawatts (GW) on Tuesday, according to federal energy data, cited by Reuters. Supply, meanwhile, could fall short of that by 1 GW, ERCOT has estimated.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Daily Standup Top Stories

Winter Freeze Cuts U.S. Natural Gas Output

January 15, 2024 Mariel Alumit

Sub-zero temperatures in much of the United States have frozen gas wells, leading to the drop in production to the lowest in 11 months, Reuters has reported, citing local data. The report added that demand for […]

BlackRock Scoops Up Energy Infrastructure Giant GIP

January 15, 2024 Mariel Alumit

Investment management giant BlackRock has struck a $12.5 billion deal for Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) in preparation of an expected surge in worldwide infrastructure needs, driven partly by the low-carbon energy transition. “If we are […]

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro
01:06 – Winter Freeze Cuts U.S. Natural Gas Output
03:27 – BlackRock Scoops Up Energy Infrastructure Giant GIP
06:41 – Markets Update
09:08 – Outro

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Michael Tanner: [00:00:14] What’s going on? Everybody? Welcome in to the Tuesday, January 16th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat Standup. Here are your top headlines. First up. Winter freeze cuts US natural gas output immensely. Hopefully everyone is staying warm right now. Next up Blackrock scoops up energy infrastructure giant G IP. I will then quickly cover uh, what happened in the oil and gas markets today and opine, um, on a new Talos energy strategic acquisition of Water North Energy specifically in that offshore area. Guys, it’s going to be a great show. As always, I’m Michael Tanner. Stuart Turley is out with a sickness that would have killed an average man. He’s still alive, so that’s great. Um, luckily he’s above average, so, um, we’ll see him back in the chair tomorrow. Um, but let’s go ahead and dive in, guys. [00:01:06][51.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:06] First story. Winter freeze cuts U.S natural gas output for everybody who’s in the Midwest right now. I’m sure you are experiencing the quote unquote deep freeze. Um, that’s going on right now. I’m here in Dallas. It’s only 11 degrees, so it’s not horrible. People here are are a little ridiculous, but subzero temperatures in much of the United States have frozen gas wells, leading to a drop in production to the lowest levels in eight months, according to Reuters, citing local data. This report also added that demand for electricity, on the other hand, was heading for a record high in some states, notably the one I sit in, which is Texas the grid. Later there, Ercot issued a conservation, um, call for Monday on expectations that demand will break last summer’s record. Here’s that quote out of air. Uh, Ercot operating reserves are expected to be low Monday morning due to the freezing temperatures, record breaking demand, and unseasonably low wind. Gotta throw that last part in there for all of our renewables, folks. Unseasonably low wind. It’s what happens when there’s no wind. Unfortunately, the turbines don’t spin. Rotors also cite some data from LCG. Its market research unit suggested that demand for natural gas, including exports, could hit 164 point 6,000,000,000 cubic feet today, rising to a further 171.9 BCF on Tuesday. Both figures would be record breaking. In North Dakota, we saw gas production was down somewhere around 700 and 800,000,000 cubic feet a day, while oil production had declined by somewhere around 150 to 280,000 barrels of oil per day. Absolutely unbelievable. Ironically, we did see, you know, futures prices didn’t hold up great, but we did see spot prices specifically that Henry Hub spot price surge by 400% over the weekend. Um, hitting about $17 per British thermal unit pound. That compares about $3. And then BTU that is currently what’s kind of getting traded on right now. Um, absolutely incredible what’s going on? I mean, it comes out to say, you know, you can put up the tweet from David Blackmon. I mean, this says it all right. Now you’ve got 0% wind going on. That’s never going to help you. Also 0% solar. It is at 530 in the morning. So it’s a little bit of a uh a smoke and mirrors there. But absolutely unbelievable. Natural gas even with being frozen is saving the day. Hope everybody this morning took a warm shower and thank your local oilfield worker. [00:03:27][140.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:27] Next up Blackrock scoops up energy infrastructure giant Jip. Absolutely incredible guys. Investment management giant Blackrock has just gone ahead and struck a deal today to acquire uh Global Infrastructure Partners GIP, um, for $12.5 billion in preparation of an expected surge in worldwide infrastructure needs. This is the quote me. This is absolutely scary, guys. We are going to decarbonize the world. The amount of capital and infrastructure is going to be very necessary, Larry Fink, our favorite um, CEO, told investors on Friday. You know, I mean, what’s hilarious is this is his other, quote, infrastructure is a $1 trillion market forecast to be one of the fastest growing segments of the private market. So there, you know, it’s sleight of hand. They they wave their hand up front and say, no, no, no, we’re doing this because of climate change. And we need to make sure that everybody decarbonize and blah, blah, blah. Then they sneak in there. Wow. Really what we’re discovering is an infrastructure is $1 trillion market. It’s one of the fastest growing private markets of all time. We’re going to go and invest in it because we feel like we’re going to make money. So let’s again, let’s be very clear. Why are they making this investment. They’re they’re telling you they’re making it because of climate change and decarbonization and blah blah blah blah. No, no, no. They’re doing this to make money. They understand the amount of capital that’s going to flow into infrastructure in general, regardless of whether or not it’s for payment change or not. Grid updates, that’s just updating the grid. All the other stuff that’s in, you know, the clueless bill is do would like to say the Inflation Reduction Act, all of that stuff. BlackRock’s got its checkbook out and says, money, please, money please. Yes. We’ll sign up, give us checks, give us checks. We’ll do this. It’s absolutely unbelievable. You know, Larry Fink also in this press release cited greater role in private capital. Oh, I. I’m sure. I’m sure you do think that Larry Fink. I’m sure Larry Fink does think that private capital will play a greater role in the infrastructure space, given the rise of public estimates in the sheer amount of capital required to modernize the digital world and advance energy independence. I love how they say energy independence and energy transition, because now, okay, even if we end up on natural gas, that’s better because we’re independent. I mean, the sleight of hand that’s going on right now, and what’s hilarious is what they’re doing right now is they’re evaluating whether or not we think these large oil and gas mergers that took place are happening. The funny part is what they should be doing, what they should be doing is looking at how Blackrock is going around, scooping up all of the companies that theoretically could benefit from things like the Inflation Reduction Act. There’s where the FTC needs to be involved, not figuring out a Chevron buying. Hess is going to give Chevron more market control. Newsflash it’s not you know, what’s going to give Chevron more control the more regulations you put on it, because they’re the only ones can handle it. I’m going to get down that road again. But it’s funny how we just see these companies like Blackrock. They continue to swoop up more and more companies and they say oh it’s for decarbonization. No no no no no. It’s for profit. This is familiar territory. Remember Blackrock is one of the largest investors not only in a lot of the top ENP companies. We won’t talk about that. Forget I mentioned that what they are attempting to do is investing more in that infrastructure space. They own a piece of Saudi Aramco’s gas pipeline subsidiary, and they also have a direct interest in the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Thank goodness for Blackrock helping us decarbonize. [00:06:40][192.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:41] Let’s move over to finance guys, which I think was a little bit of a of a shocking move today, specifically when when we talk about what happened with the overall markets, we did see, um, with, you know, uh, the 15th being MLK day, we did not necessarily have S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, the overall stock market was closed. Futures were open, though we did see crude oil open, uh, gap upwards a little bit. We opened in about 7273 kind of where we trade right now for the spot price. We did see us, uh, down to somewhere around uh, 7115, mainly off the back of of of of some kind of weak. I mean, everything right now is being driven by the conflict of what’s going on in the Middle East. We saw over the weekend, we saw the US attack, some of the Houthis, um, in Yemen today. Some of that stuff has kind of we’ve crawled back a little bit in order to. Yeah. You know, we we were less hawkish, but but really a lot of what they’re seeing with the swings of the market has a, has more to do with the kind of the geopolitical tension and risk that’s being priced in on the natural gas side. As I mentioned, we saw prices for spot prices over the weekend spike up to $17. But really what we’re seeing on the futures market is actually a forecast for a little bit of a warmer January, which happened to actually drive prices down. We are at about $3.40 per MMBtu, which we’re now seeing that at about $3.08, mainly, again off the back of that, um, future, uh, updated, uh, forecast. Uh, it’s going to be a lot warmer, which unfortunately is going to have a larger effect on prices, specifically that future price going forward. But the only other thing that I saw today, um, was Talos Energy. They’re going to go ahead and and announce an acquisition of Qatar North Energy. Um, is a privately held US Gulf of Mexico exploration, um, with ownership in several Pacific fields. Again, it’s about 30,000 boe per day. Um, they added about 1.7 billion, um, of proven reserves. Now that’s a PB ten. So it’ll be interesting to see how that works. Um, they’ve got a bunch of synergies that are expected to save about $50 million aka layoffs. So we’re unfortunate for people there. They paid about 965 million in cash. So, uh, pretty good from a, uh, uh, on a strategy standpoint. You know, this is, uh, Talos CEO Tim Dunn. Ah, Duncan. Today’s announcement marks one of the most big milestones to build a large scale offshore exploration company. You know, they have multiple deepwater. They have a big deepwater portfolio, which is where Talos is trying to get to. So good for them for for linking up. [00:09:08][146.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:08] We we we may go ahead and see this on a, uh, on a deal spotlight here soon, but that’s really all I have guys. Hopefully still feels better. You will see us back in the chair tomorrow. Uh, but we’ll let you get out of here, guys. As always, news and analysis. You just heard world’s greatest website, energynewsbeat.com. Hit the description below. Dashboard dot energy news. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:09:08][0.0][531.4]

The post Daily Energy Standup Episode #287 – Winter Freeze Impacts U.S. Natural Gas, Blackrock’s $12.5 Billion Infrastructure Move, and Talos Energy’s Strategic Acquisitions appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

Condo prices in Toronto carve out two-year low, house prices just a hair behind.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

House prices in Canada have now fallen by 18% from the peak in March 2022 – or by $171,500 (all in Canadian dollars) – after the 1.2% drop in December from November, the sixth month-to-month drop in a row, according to the Home Price Benchmark Index for single family houses by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) today.

This brought the national price down to $779,100, the level first reached on the way up in September 2021. Compared to December a year ago, after the massive drops in 2022, the price was up by 1%.

Big losses spread across most of the major markets. And even in Calgary, prices dropped from the record. We’ll get to the individual markets in a moment.

Home sales in December rose by 3.7% from a year ago; and on a seasonally adjusted basis by 8.7% from November. But for all of 2023, home sales fell by 11% from 2022, making it “the lowest annual level for national sales activity since 2008,” CREA said.

“Was the December bounce in home sales the start of the expected recovery in Canadian housing markets? Probably not just yet,” said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s Senior Economist. “It was more likely just some of the sellers and buyers that were holding onto unrealistic pricing expectations last fall finally coming together to get deals done before the end of the year.”

The problem is that prices are too damn high, inflated by years of the Bank of Canada’s near-0% interest rate policy and by its massive QE during the pandemic.

The end of easy money.

The Bank of Canada has tightened policy, the easy money is over, it hiked its overnight rate to 5.0% in July and has kept it there. Inflation in goods and energy has vanished, prices have come down, but in services, inflation is hot and isn’t backing off, and inflation in rents has exploded. The Bank of Canada doesn’t appear to be eager to fuel this inflation with rate cuts, and it has taken a careful wait-and-see approach.

At the same time, the Bank of Canada is unwinding the results of its massive money-printing during the pandemic and has already shed 57% of the $455 billion in QE assets that it had added during the pandemic.

There is still aways to go to drain the crazy liquidity thrown at the markets during the pandemic, and more will drain this year, including on February 1, March 1, and April 1, when some big chunks of the Bank of Canada’s holdings of Government of Canada (GoC) bonds mature: $33 billion combined is scheduled to come off by April 1. In other words, over the next three months, the BoC’s total assets will drop by another 10%:

Single-family House Prices by Market.

Greater Toronto Area (GTA): The MLS Home Price Benchmark Index for single-family houses fell by 1.4% in December from November, to $1,273,300, the sixth month in a row of declines. The drop whittled down the year-over-year gain to 0.6%.

The benchmark price has plunged by 20.0%, or by $317,700, since the peak in February 2022 and is now below where it had first been in September 2021 on the way up, and is just a hair from carving out a two-year low:

For condos in the GTA, the benchmark price dropped by 1.7% in December from November, by 1.3% year-over-year, and by 14.6% from the peak in April 2022, to $683,200. And it has successfully carved out a two-year low:

In the Hamilton-Burlington metro (part of the “Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area”), the single-family benchmark price declined by 0.4% in December from November, to $861,100, a hair from carving out a two-year low.

From peak in February 2022: -25.7%, or -$297,800
Year-over-year: +0.8%.

Greater Vancouver: The benchmark price for single-family houses fell 1.0% for the month, to $1,964,400:

From peak in April 2022: -6.6% or -$137,700
Year-over-year: +7.6%

Victoria: The single-family benchmark price fell by 1.2% for the month to $1,134,600 million:

From peak in April 2022: -12.3% or -$159,800
Year-over-year: +2.5%

Ottawa: The benchmark price of single-family houses fell by 0.6% for the month, to $704,900, below where they’d first been in March 2021:

From peak in March 2022: -14.4% or -$118,300
Year-over-year: +2.7%.

A head-and-shoulders chart for the housing market.

Calgary: The single-family benchmark price fell by 0.5% for the month to $635,600, having now roughly flatlined for the past four months, after the big surge earlier in 2023. Year-over-year, the benchmark price was up 12.1%. Note how prices essentially went nowhere between 2008 and mid-2020, when the effects of money printing and the renewed oil boom kicked in.

Montreal: The single-family benchmark price fell by 1.4% for the month, to $595,600:

From peak in May 2022: -8.0% or -$52,000
Year-over-year: +3.5%

Halifax-Dartmouth: The single-family benchmark price ticked up by 0.7%, after the 3.9% plunge in the prior month, to $520,800:

From peak in April 2022: -10.1% or -$58,700
Year-over-year: +5.9%.

Quebec City Area: The single-family benchmark price rose by 0.7%, to $392,500 and was up by 7.4% year-over-year. October had set a new high:

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The post The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in Canada: Nationally -18% in December from Peak, Toronto -20%. Even in Calgary, House Prices Dropped. End of Easy Money appeared first on Energy News Beat.

Energy News Beat

ENERGY REALITIES EPISODE #94 – ENERGY THREATS

Highlights of the podcast:

01:25 -Rental giant hertz dumps EVs, including Teslas for gas cars
05:18 – U.S. resumes Russian oil imports and defies sanction.
06:42 – Uranium imports from Russia
09:02 – Defying sanctions with the Russian oil imports
10:00 – The Japanese government has announced plans
10:26 – Hydrogen is the next available mechanism for wealth transfer
13:55 – The Jones act
18:25 – Could China hack our electric grid?
21:51 – Texas power grid
27:06 – The federal government wants to get rid of all natural gas and coal fired power by 2035
30:17 – Hawaii Five Uh-Oh
31:51 – TransWest transmission progress
35:43 – The grid
37:20 – We are at the whims of the weather
40:57 – Cyber security
43:52 – China has the most wind farms and solar farms
44:21 – The grid stability and security in Europe

The Podcast Hosts for The Energy Transition

Energy Thought Leader, Podcast Host, Curitiba, Parana, Brazil
International Author writing about energy, mining, and geopolitical issues. Bulgaria
Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.

Energy Consulting Specialist

Energy Analyst | Economic and Geopolitical Analyst | ExFounder U&I Global | Consultant, Advisor | Commonwealth Scholar

President, and CEO, Sandstone Group, Podcast Host

Blubrry Podcast:

ENERGY REALITIES EPISODE #94 – ENERGY THREATS

Armando Cavanha [00:00:03] Energy realities. Number 94. Energy threats. Good morning. Good afternoon everyone.

David Blackmon [00:00:10] Hello

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:12] Hello, everyone.

Stuart Turley [00:00:13] It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:17] And, uh, let me show. Uh, so, uh, Stuart, uh, before we start, a friend of mine sent this photo from Caribbean Seas who found his face. The face of this photo by becoming a manager. Podcast and articles. Could you recommend.

Stuart Turley [00:00:38] Nice. You know, we had his yacht on there last week. Armando and team, uh, I know that he was perusing around and when this on the back of his yacht.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:48] Yeah, yeah. Uh, sorry. David. Oh. No joke.

David Blackmon [00:00:54] Oh, I love those.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:55] We love you.

David Blackmon [00:00:56] Would have been fun. We didn’t do that, but it would be fun. Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:00:59] You shouldn’t.

Armando Cavanha [00:01:01] That. So before we go to the discussions, as it in a, uh, uh, proposal was, let’s go to the newspaper headlines and could we start pursue it in a place? Uh, you have one?

Irina Slav [00:01:14] Yeah, I have one. But it’s just lovely out of nowhere, completely out of the blue. Totally unexpected rental job that it’s dumps EVs, including Teslas for gas cars. And the reason they’re dumping them is that they’re too high maintenance. Basically, they’re spending too much money maintaining these cars and, you know, covering damages when they break down. Even though we were being told that EV is such low maintenance compared to petrol cars because they have so much fewer moving parts, apparently this is not the case. Uh, it’s it’s so that they’re selling a third of their EV fleet. Something tells me this is just the beginning. And there will be further reductions in this fleet. And I can predict a wave of second hand EVs, hidden markets very soon.

David Blackmon [00:02:13] Yes, ma’am.

Irina Slav [00:02:16] Yeah, I know we’ll agree on that. It’s all right. We have second hand EV is being sold here in in the, uh, you know, the heaven for second hand cars. Uh, I saw the other day, uh, a Volkswagen. Eat up the little ones. Yeah. A second hand ev. No, it was actually a hybrid. And it sold for more than, uh, a comparable petrol car.

Stuart Turley [00:02:43] Of course.

Tammy Nemeth [00:02:45] Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:02:45] Use. Really? It’s second hand. You can’t do this. And it was that. That was my chuckle for the week. Oh, one of them.

Armando Cavanha [00:02:57] Yeah. Uh,

Tammy Nemeth [00:02:58] There are quite a few last week.

Irina Slav [00:03:00] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:03:01] Yes. There were.

Stuart Turley [00:03:03] Well, yeah. I love this Irina on that story. They were talking about the insurance folks are starting to be a real problem. Uh, so when you sit back and take a look, the insurance is not Mickey Mouse and around on, uh, EVs. Um, the UK had some serious guy. I saw some I. Tammy, I’m not sure if you put it out there or not. Uh, a while ago, but insurance is one of the main drivers behind everybody having to bail out of. Um, EVs.

Irina Slav [00:03:36] Insurance is a great transition. Minded.

Tammy Nemeth [00:03:39] That’s what those are. But they, they have to divest from oil and gas investments, you know.

David Blackmon [00:03:45] Right.

Tammy Nemeth [00:03:45] That kind of thing. But with with respect to the EVs, if you have just the slightest bit of impact, you don’t know what kind of damage has been done to that battery, which ends up being almost the, you know, the frame of the car. So if the insurers are like, well, we have to replace the whole thing, which then of course makes everything more expensive.

David Blackmon [00:04:05] Yeah. I mean, we.

Irina Slav [00:04:05] Moving parts.

Tammy Nemeth [00:04:07] But no moving parts.

David Blackmon [00:04:09] We have the example out of, uh, I think it was Canada, right, a couple of weeks ago where a car had been involved in an accident, an EV. Uh, I think it was one of the Ford models. And the frame underneath the battery compartment got bent. And the. The dealer set the owner a bill for $60,000 for the repair. Yes, because they had to not only fix the frame, but they had to replace the entire battery compartment and the battery itself. And the bill was $60,000, which is almost what he paid for the car in the first place. You can’t make this stuff up.

Irina Slav [00:04:57] So the EVs basically cost nothing but the batteries. Uh.

David Blackmon [00:05:02] It’s the batteries, yeah. It’s insane. It’s absolutely. Insane. And it is not sustainable in any way, shape or form.

Tammy Nemeth [00:05:12] Yeah.

Armando Cavanha [00:05:13] Yeah. Okay. Stuart, please. Uh, yes. You know.

Stuart Turley [00:05:18] Uh, U.S., uh, resumes Russian imports and defy sanction. This was a really pretty cool little story. I’m not sure who I stole it from, but, um, it it it, uh, you know, years ago, people were saying, uh, I was saying we’re importing oil from Russia, and everybody goes, no, we’re not importing oil from Russia. We are hypocrites in the US. Not only do we put sanctions, uh, we import oil from Russia, even with sanctions. And it was above the EU, uh, $60 price. Um, I don’t see that changing.

Irina Slav [00:05:56] As this G7 price cap.

Stuart Turley [00:05:59] Thank you.

David Blackmon [00:06:00] Yes, yes. G7

Tammy Nemeth [00:06:02] So the US is defying its own sanctions and so.

Irina Slav [00:06:05] Is the EU.

Stuart Turley [00:06:07] Uh, yes. And and some of the culprits. I was trying to find out the, uh, port of entry on some of these and our beloved friends in, uh, California. Uh, just watch this. You were with Gavin Newsom. I’ve mentioned this before. I’ve got more stuff coming, but they’re planning on importing all their refined products from China. So not only are we hypocrites, we’re really big hypocrites.

Armando Cavanha [00:06:34] But Stuart, not only oil, but importing, uh, I suppose, uh, nuclear raw materials from Russia, you know.

Irina Slav [00:06:40] Oh, uranium. Yeah. Uranium imports from Russia. Uh, running high.

Stuart Turley [00:06:45] Uh, 20%. And I just interviewed a, uh, nuclear expert for uranium in the US, but we still don’t have the refining to make the yellowcake. And so it’s. Yeah, we gotta we can get the uranium, but, um, uh, I’d like to check the investors in the, uh, U.S. Senate that invested, like Bill and Hillary Clinton did. I just say that I something like that. Sorry.

Tammy Nemeth [00:07:14] I mean, Ross, Adam said that.

Stuart Turley [00:07:17] They’re great investors.

Tammy Nemeth [00:07:21] Well, you know, Canada has a lot of uranium in Saskatchewan. It’s the highest quality uranium in the world. But again, as Stu says, there’s where do you refine it? Where do you process it? Because Russia is the one who’s been doing it forever or for a very long time. And the United States, of course, offshored that that processing capability, just like with with the wind and solar and the EV batteries, the processing of those materials are taking place in China. They’re taking place elsewhere for a number of different reasons. Right. All related to this obsession with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So makes us makes us vulnerable.

Stuart Turley [00:08:01] One of the things with this story just really is is sad is the African, uh, folks are being taken advantage of. And what I’m noticing in all the articles across the. World are. The massive amounts of trips from, uh, Europe, from the US, and everybody’s trying to lock up deals with critical minerals in Africa. And we are taking advantage of the West of the African folks

David Blackmon [00:08:30] Hard to believe

Stuart Turley [00:08:31] Pardon?

David Blackmon [00:08:32] So hard to believe, but they never got them.

Stuart Turley [00:08:36] Yeah, it’s just sad. I’m. I’m for, uh, Africa first. Uh, I think that they need to get them elevated out of poverty. And Armando, that film you sent this morning, Tammy was cracking up on, uh, about the hypocrisy of some of our political leaders.

Armando Cavanha [00:08:56] Yes.

Tammy Nemeth [00:08:57] Yeah. Some very important,

Tammy Nemeth [00:09:00] Can I add. Armando, can I add something with the. With this defying sanctions with the Russian oil imports? Because there was an article this morning in your active where they were saying that, um, that Russia has been flooding the European market with fertilizer, so defying more European sanctions and, uh, and the, and the solution was to reduce the amount of fertilizer. That farmers use so that they can do weaponised rubber.

David Blackmon [00:09:29] Oh of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:09:30] I love how the EU makes it sound like Russia is stuffing commodities down Europe road. They don’t want them. We will stuffing them down their throats. Yeah. It’s really unclear. I don’t know if it’s pathological. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Playing the victim. Always

Armando Cavanha [00:09:54] Uh, let’s let’s go to the next one. Uh, Stuart.

Stuart Turley [00:09:58] Um, on subs. Uh, the Japanese government has announced plans to spend 3 trillion to 20, uh, $20 and 86 billion on subsidies for delivered clean hydrogen and its derivatives for a 15 year period. I just I love Irina’s take on, um, uh, hydrogen. And I want to go on record as saying I think hydrogen is the next available mechanism for wealth transfer, because there is such a dramatic failure of wind and solar. And with the article that I believe I read it and Tammy and I and you talked about was the, uh, hydrogen corridor being put in. Right. Uh, hydrogen is such a small, uh, molecule, and the technology is not there. Early on, I’ll admit I’m a big hydrogen fan, but I’m afraid hydrogen is going to turn out just like the Hindenburg. So, um, I think it’s going to be the next. Well, um, uh, transformation from the rich to the, uh, to the rich from the poor to the rich. Um, and I just don’t believe that the technology’s there. And then the, uh, World Economic Forum is meeting today, and they’re now saying that they want to control the water. There’s going to be a water crisis, and there’s going to be an energy crisis. And Schwab said that, uh, they’re blackout of the grid and the blackout of the internet is going to be, uh, going to make like, uh, Covid was a warning, was a Warm-Up or insignificant? I can’t remember its phrase, but I believe hydrogen is going to be the next, uh, money laundering pit. If you were

Tammy Nemeth [00:11:57] Natural asset companies.

Irina Slav [00:12:00] Yeah.

Armando Cavanha [00:12:00] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:12:01] Speaking of the WEF, the theme of the WEF conference this year, and it’s just hard to even you cannot make this stuff up. The theme is Restoring Trust.

Irina Slav [00:12:16] Oh, yes. I know.

David Blackmon [00:12:21] We have a full text, Klaus Schwab, Armando. I mean, this guy is like, the definitive bond villain. Okay. Yeah. You have to look at this guy to know you can’t trust a word that comes out of that many mouth.

Armando Cavanha [00:12:38] No.

David Blackmon [00:12:38] And then you’re going to have al Gore there. John Kerry’s going to be there. Hey, I don’t know. Biden might show up. Who? Who at the WEF conference can you trust do anything beneficial for the global community? I mean, it’s just the most it’s gone. It’s just so, hey, just.

Stuart Turley [00:12:58] How many battery powered Nobili that use?

Armando Cavanha [00:13:02] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:13:03] I’m not.

Tammy Nemeth [00:13:03] Well, it’s interesting because an article came up, uh, just before New Year’s where, um, it was saying that the only place where globalization and all these different groups can come together and speak openly is at the World Economic Forum. And that is really, really important on the global stage to be that convener where everyone’s there on the same level. And then I read the New York Post where they, they had the the hierarchy of the badges. So hardly everybody, they’re on the same level.

Irina Slav [00:13:38] And they can talk openly.

Stuart Turley [00:13:41] The one thing that scares me.

Armando Cavanha [00:13:44] Yeah, Thank you, sir, for coming.

Stuart Turley [00:13:47] Oh, that’s a great for me.

Armando Cavanha [00:13:49] Yes. John’s act. Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:13:50] Um, I think that that is an outstanding question. And the the Jones act is still in existence because of lobbyists. And David can correct me if I’m.

David Blackmon [00:14:01] Labor union.

Stuart Turley [00:14:02] And. Yes, uh, and the unions and I it’s now become a point. I believe that there’s only five, uh, 4 or 5 major shipyards in the US. Three are related or almost dedicated to military. And that leaves one left, and none of them are capable of building the large, uh, tankers. And and so, uh, if the Jones Act, it doesn’t even allow for U.S., uh, to buy somebody else’s tankers for a U.S. company, which I would be okay with. Hey. By a dang tanker. Um, uh, I, I would almost want to buy a used tanker from the Dart fleet. Uh, I think that, you know, there’s 5 to 600 Russian tankers, uh, and other tank, excuse me, Venezuelan, Iranian and others that are being self-insured. And those you can get tetanus by just looking at these things. And there is an absolute ecological disaster waiting to happen, and nobody’s going to pay to get those things cleaned up. Guess who’s using that oil out of those tankers? The West Gas, who is, uh, also using it? It’s going away. Yes. It’s now going away from the US Petro dollar because of the weaponization of the U.S. dollar from our current administration. So the Jones Act has a second and third order of magnitude that is very, very far reaching. And you tie that to the weaponization of the U.S. dollar. And holy smokes, Batman, it does really impact. So that is a great question. Was I don’t think, any hope of getting fixed.

David Blackmon [00:15:56] The Jones Act should have never existed. It should have been repealed 100 years ago. It has no real benefit to the American public. It’s just a tool to to ensure labor unions in the United States get to maintain labor jobs and increase costs for everything.

Stuart Turley [00:16:15] And, I want to.Go on. Record

Armando Cavanha [00:16:16] Like of local content is a protection of the market. No local content.

David Blackmon [00:16:21] It it it makes it illegal. You cannot it has very limited application. It prevents the movement of any good, uh, on a ship between one U.S port and another U.S. port on anything other than a U.S. flag vessel that is manned by a U.S. crew. So it’s a job protection act for American labor. That increases costs for everyone. Slows our economy and provides no useful benefit other than to a select few hundred individuals who work on those shifts.

Irina Slav [00:17:03] That’s very, very specific job protection.

David Blackmon [00:17:07] Yes it is.

Stuart Turley [00:17:08] And the unions de that I like the unions when they’re run. Right. And they do protect them. I do like the unions. But in this 100 jobs that are being protected, they’re hurting thousands of union jobs in a shipyard. So we let 100 people dictate the consumer price. It’s pretty sad.

David Blackmon [00:17:31] But to be clear, the Jones Act is a very key element of why you see Russian LNG tankers, uh, sailing into Boston Harbor and other New England ports every winter because it’s illegal to move U.S. LNG from Louisiana or Texas up to Boston Harbor, because there are no U.S. flagged LNG tankers staffed by U.S. crews. And so whether that applies to any of this Russian, back to the question that was asked, I don’t know whether that applies to any of these Russian oil exports, but it certainly applies to the LNG import.

Armando Cavanha [00:18:13] Great.

Stuart Turley [00:18:14] Good question.

Armando Cavanha [00:18:15] Yeah. Uh, Stuart please. It’s yours.

Stuart Turley [00:18:19] This one, uh, scares me to death. And, um, China could hack our. Could China hack our electric grid? In four words? Yes. And how soon? The real question is, my ark is my aukus our secretary? Secretary of, uh, uh, Homeland Security in on it? This is, uh, built up of about 4 or 5 different interviews and people that I’ve talked to that really do scare me. In that article, there was, uh, Trump had actually put in a executive order banning, uh, importing of equipment that could be remotely controlled by the Chinese or any other foreign national. The Biden administration nullified that immediately. And since then, the major components for the grid interconnects has resumed. That is coinciding with information that I found from the balloon. We had the Chinese balloon come across connect to the U.S. grid. I mean, the U.S., uh, internet provider and I talked to some folks yesterday about Chinese, uh, nationals that worked for security firms that were doing bad things. And I can’t go into any more than that. But then I was talking to, uh, Michael Yon, who was in Panama with George McMillan. Uh, George McMillan and I have video of my workers coming in on a Black Hawk helicopter to a Chinese military base that was getting ready to import Chinese military aged men into the United States. My orcas drove in, and he has pictures of him getting in and going in the meetings since that meeting last year. The base has been increased dramatically. 900 Chinese military aged men came in, uh, over the last year. But in the last 100 days, 10,900 Chinese military age men, uh, came in and Mayorkas knows about it. So you have not only the balloon which the Biden administration let roll by. You have it connect to the grid that they denied that it had, uh, the internet once it’s connected in a technology, uh, discussion that I’ve had with several folks. Once you connect to the grid and you can figure out where the IP addresses are, triangulate. And then there’s been another one from Kyle Reeves. There has been over 120 physical attacks on the grid that have been covered up out of mainstream media. The grid is under attack. But who’s attacking it? I got a question. Uh, is it our own government?

Armando Cavanha [00:21:38] No questions about. And how’s that one talking about? You are talking about grid. And, um, there is a comment from Victor Garcia.

Stuart Turley [00:21:46] Great question.

Armando Cavanha [00:21:47] David. Them and Stuart for sure. How Texas power grid.

Stuart Turley [00:21:53] I’m going to turn it over to David because David has had some fantastic, uh, post go out and everything else. David’s on it. And he’s also bundled up to protect.

David Blackmon [00:22:03] Well, I just I’m doing my part to conserve energy. Today, my wife and I have turned our thermostats down to 66, uh, due to the request from Ercot to conserve energy. As you can see, um, fully dressed to go to North Dakota. Uh, but I’m in Texas in my house. Um, you know, we, uh, we have, uh, snow on the ground. It’s, uh, the temperature, uh, right now is 11 degrees in Mansfield, Texas, where I live. Uh, the whole state basically is below freezing right now. Ercot issued a conservation request to all of its customers to conserve energy from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. central time this morning. So we got an hour and a half to go, but it looks like it. And so here’s the reason why Ercot says, well, we have to conserve because we’re having unseasonably low wind right now across the state. Well that’s nonsense. One of the most well known facts about weather and wind energy is that the wind dies down as the temperatures drop in Texas. Ercot knows that full well they can plan. Full well, and I resent like hell. Them lying to their customers about that facet of this. I don’t blame Ercot for all this. They can’t control the weather, but they need to be honest in their in their public pronouncements. And that’s just a falsehood and everyone knows it. Uh, wind is underperforming because wind always underperforms when the weather isn’t just right. You’re getting zero from solar right now because the sun isn’t shining. And even when that sun comes up, folks, it’s going to be really cloudy across much of the state of Texas, and you’re not going to get as much solar as you’re normally going to get on a sunny day. We all know that too. What else is failing? Battery storage. Battery storage. Whoo! All summer long said it was saving the day on the Texas grid at 719 this morning. Was giving us point 8% of total generation. Where was the generation coming from? On the grid at 7:19 a.m. this morning, 85% of it was coming from natural gas and coal. Okay. And 67.4% of it was coming from. Guess what? Natural gas. So the survival of the Texas grid, uh, during this cold snap, is going to come down to what it always comes down to, and that is whether or not we can keep our pipelines from freezing up and our natural gas power plants from freezing up. Now, the PUC and the Railroad Commission and Ercot all tell us that we’ve made all this progress winterizing those facilities and ensuring they won’t freeze up, and most importantly, ensuring Ercot doesn’t turn the electricity off to those facilities like it did during Winter Storm Uri in 2021. And that’s what caused about 30% of natural gas to drop off the grid during Winter Storm Uri. And if all this progress has really been made, here’s the thing the grid is going to be just fine because we got enough natural gas to cover the demand. But if those gas plants start freezing up, or those pipelines start freezing up, then we’re going to have a real big problem. So that’s what it all boils down to here. Wind and solar are underperforming as they always do, and it’s all up to natural gas.

Stuart Turley [00:25:36] And Tammy’s been all over Canada and Alberta. Good question.

David Blackmon [00:25:43] Yes. Yeah. Uh.

Irina Slav [00:25:45] It was cold.

David Blackmon [00:25:46] Because it was cold. The wind was blowing yesterday. The sun was shining across most of the state yesterday. And so wind and solar didn’t charge the batteries. And so they’re not producing much today. Yeah. And again, this is all very predictable. And I try to defend her account when I can because I don’t want to demonize those folks. They work their butts off. They’re in a almost impossible situation because of the idiot regulations at the federal level, or mandating all this. Wind and solar get slammed into our grid, and it’s hard to manage such a complex mix. And they are woefully short of dispatchable thermal capacity, because our power generators in this state have refused to build new natural gas for a decade. And that’s the real problem here. And it’s why the legislature incentivize the building of new natural gas thermal capacity over the next five years, up to ten gigawatts of it, which is desperately needed and hopefully will get built up.

Armando Cavanha [00:26:50] Um, Tammy and Irina, that’s not the case of Bulgaria and Oxford, but case of Alberta. That’s better because of Alberta.

David Blackmon [00:26:59] Yes. Uh. Tammy.

Tammy Nemeth [00:27:00] Canada? Yeah. So, um, part of the thing in Canada, of course, is that the federal government wants to get rid of all natural gas and coal fired power by 2035. And the province of Saskatchewan said, no, we’re not going to do it. You don’t have a constitutional right to tell us what to do. We’re not going to do it. And so it’s created this big crisis. But in Alberta, where there was, uh, a socialist government that was in alignment with all of this net zero transition talk, um, shut down prematurely a bunch of their coal fired power. They said that they weren’t going to build new ones. Um, the conservatives came back in. They commissioned three new gas fired power plants, which are supposed to come online later this year. So that will be good. Uh, but in the meantime, natural gas is filling up the gaps as much as it can. They’ve built a lot of wind and solar, which produced zero. Of course, as David knows, in Texas, when it gets really cold and we’re in a northern climate, which gets maybe 6 or 7 hours of sunlight in a day. And, you know, everyone was like, oh, but it was really sunny the other day. Why did we have more solar? Because you’re in a northern latitude where even if it’s sunny, you’re not actually generating that much power from your solar panels. Um, and it’s it’s created this problem where they’ve had to use these interconnects and Ottawa and the energy transition people talk about, well, if the wind’s not blowing where you are, it’ll be blowing somewhere else. So if we just have long enough interconnectors, you can, um, offset what, when? When the weather’s bad. But if you’re a grid and you need to be planning for the future, you need to be planning for that. Um, extraordinary circumstance, not business as usual. And I think Meredith Angwin has talked very good about that in her book, Shorting the Grid, uh, of what’s required in actual planning. Hey, way to go, Stuart. Um, and not what they currently do, which seems to be concerned more about how do we do the pricing and do the interconnects and whatnot, rather than actually forward planning for those contingencies. And so Alberta had to put out the emergency alert saying, please don’t use so much, um, electricity because we’re we’re getting some from Saskatchewan. British Columbia was also having trouble. And even though they’re 80% hydro, um, they still needed to import electricity from Alberta. So Alberta is struggling. They’re shipping stuff to B.C., they’re getting stuff from Saskatchewan, and they still have to ask people not to use energy. So I think this is one of the elements of energy reality. When it’s bad weather, unreliable wind and solar is unreliable. And is that really what you ought to be based entire technological civilization on? Something that’s so reliable? Unreliable,

David Blackmon [00:30:03] Right Yes.

Armando Cavanha [00:30:04] Right.

David Blackmon [00:30:04] It’s insanity.

Armando Cavanha [00:30:06] Yeah. Uh, Stuart. Um, one more from you.

Irina Slav [00:30:11] This is the same one.

David Blackmon [00:30:12] We already did.

Armando Cavanha [00:30:13] Oh, sorry. Sorry for this. Yeah, but

Stuart Turley [00:30:17] Hawaii Five-O. Uh oh. Uh, I love the energy. Bad boys. Those guys, you know, you need to follow them. Uh, you know, they’re not as good as David Blackmon. Irina, uh, you know, but, hey, they’re they’re they do good stuff. Hawaii. Uh, I believe it was two years ago. They took their last shipment of coal and of their last shipment of coal. The wind. Uh, they’ve had solar and wind and storage, just like we’re facing in Texas. And they really break out the numbers on this. As far as the, um, disaster that’s happening. And it’s a lot cheaper to have a coal standby because you don’t have to like, uh, it it’s just it makes sense to have standby power for the grid as opposed to this. So they’ve got rolling blackouts, uh, and they have some serious problems because they’re demanding the same thing that’s going on in Alberta, Texas, in the U.S., in these coast. It’s a great point.

Armando Cavanha [00:31:26] Perfect. Uh. David. please.

David Blackmon [00:31:34] Hello. But. Yeah, I wrote about this last summer, too. Uh, this is from Cowboy State Daily, which does a wonderful job of reporting on energy. Uh, specific to that state, uh, the Wyoming, which is a state I dearly love and have spent a lot of time in, um, this trans west, uh, transmission progress. Actually, it was really almost 20 years ago. Maybe they started permitting, uh, the permitting process for this 700 or 800 mile transmission line that’s supposed to carry wind energy. Uh, uh, electricity generated by Wyoming wind farms, uh, out to Oregon on the West Coast. And in 2005, they began the permitting process. You’d have to get permits, not just from the federal government, but also from the state government, local governments, rights of way, uh, archeological sites. Because when you’re, uh, going across the West, of course, you’re going across a lot of Native American lands with a lot of archeological sites on them. And every time your bulldozer turns, turns over anything, it looks like ashes from a campfire. You’ve got to halt your progress. But you can get the state archeologist or federal archeologist out there to, uh, survey the site and make sure that’s not some sacred Native American site, uh, which they want to preserve. And, and I don’t have any big problem with that. Uh, so this is how long it takes to just permit 7 or 800 miles of transmission for the United States now to fully electrify the United States, which the Biden administration keeps talking about, is going to require something like 200,000 miles of new transmission, high powered transmission lines in the United States, 7 or 800 miles to almost 20 years just to permit. It’s going to take another five years and probably longer than that to build the transmission lines, because in the process of putting in the transmission lines, you’re going to come across a lot more disputes about rights of way in archeological sites. And so also, uh, migrating animal corridors. And you know, how many birds you’re going to kill with those transmission lines is going to come up. You’re going to get sued by the center for Biological Diversity under the Endangered Species Act. Repeatedly, over and over again during the construction process. It’s no different than building a or gas pipeline across the West. And all this stuff happens all the time. And it’s why dwell one of 1000 reasons why this energy transition, as it’s envisioned by these idiots in the Biden administration is completely unsustainable and impossible in a free society that protects everyone’s rights. Okay. This is the key thing about this, and it’s why we’re increasingly moving to authoritarian form of government, not just in the United States, but across Canada and Europe as well. Because you cannot do this in a free society that protects everyone’s rights. And so everyone’s rights are going to go away as these zealots, these religious zealots continue to push this agenda. And it’s why this year’s election in the United States is probably the most important election we’ve ever had. I don’t like saying that, but this time it’s actually true.

Stuart Turley [00:35:08] Well said.

David Blackmon [00:35:09] That that’s my my third rant for the day, and I usually only have one of those. But this is three. I took a week off. So off, you know, I needed to do more

Stuart Turley [00:35:19] Irina Usually good for a good rant.

Armando Cavanha [00:35:21] Yeah, sorry, I put

David Blackmon [00:35:23] And I don’t want to dominate the conversation, so.

Armando Cavanha [00:35:26] No no no no no no no. You need to dominate the conversation. You all right? Fantastic. Let’s go ahead. David. Sorry I put before.

David Blackmon [00:35:34] Oh. Uh, well, yes. And so I talked with, uh, really smart people. Uh, Rob Allen, who was a senior analyst at inverse who studies the grid. This was on Thursday when when the weather forecast was entirely different than what’s turning out happening. And he was very optimistic about the potential for the grid to get through this cold spell. Uh, I think he’s going to send me over some more information today, so I’ll probably write a subsequent piece about it. But basically, Rob’s view was very supportive of the Ercot view that they issued on Wednesday, which was that the grid is well equipped to survive this cold snap, and I think it remains well equipped. We’re going to have plenty of generation as long as those natural gas facilities don’t freeze up. Which happened to about 30% of them. Again during Winter Storm Uri. But most of that was because those sites had not been properly registered as critical grid infrastructure sites, and Ercot turned the power off to them. As long as Ercot continues to provide electricity to. It’s a self-feeding process, okay. It’s like when you get that error condition in your Excel spreadsheet. This is a, you know, a what do they call it? I can’t you circular circular equation. You’ve got to keep the gas on to keep the electricity on. And you got to keep the electricity on to keep the gas on okay. It’s a big circle. And if one of those sides fails, the other side’s going to fail. So as long as we keep the electricity to those natural gas infrastructure facilities, we’re going to be okay.

Armando Cavanha [00:37:13] Yep. Perfect. Uh, David, please go ahead,

David Blackmon [00:37:20] Oh my god, So, uh, we are at the whims of the weather. This was a, uh. And I can’t remember. I apologize, I can’t remember the fellow’s name that gave you the ABC station out of Austin. Interviewed. Um, but, you know, he’s right. I mean, we are at the whims of the weather. To the extent that we still have this shortage of thermal dispatchable electricity in Texas, which we do and will for the next several years. And as long as Ercot modeling processes continue to over predict what they’re going to get from wind and solar, which appears to be a chronic issue at Ercot, and they have to figure out a way to adjust for that, because we know, without any doubt at all that wind and solar and probably and that means batteries are going to fail to it’s all going to fail when the weather conditions are not right. Okay. So we have to have up. But loading all this wind and solar on our grid is requiring us now to fund two different grids, a reliable grid that will keep the lights and the and the heating on when the wind and solar fail, and all the wind and solar that we’re being forced by the federal government to subsidize into reality. And that’s why your your power rates continue to go up, because we’re paying for two different grids. And unfortunately, that’s what we’re forced to do, mainly by federal regulations, which I won’t try to get into here.

Tammy Nemeth [00:38:46] But it’s not just in the United States, it’s in Europe, it’s in Canada, it’s in all of the different countries. And this, I think, is, is the first of the energy threats. Right. It it’s um, the weather is, is a we’re at the, the whim of the weather, which we tried to get away from over the past hundred years. And now we’ve gone back to being dependent on things that are subject to bad weather, which is a massive energy threat. And it’s not just geopolitical things. It’s this ideological and political commitment to doing these things that make everything more expensive and make us vulnerable to weather. I think one of the brilliant things about the past 200 years of development, with respect to diversification of energy sources, as we’ve talked about before, the energy edition. So we had wood, we still have coal, we still have natural gas, we have hydro, we have nuclear, we have wind and solar. In certain circumstances, it kind of makes sense, I guess if you’re out in the remote areas where you can’t attach to the grid. But now all of this is being put under threat by this commitment to get rid of most of the reliable sources of energy. Um, and then have it be reliant on these things that are vulnerable to weather.

Armando Cavanha [00:40:05] And could we list what are the threats, uh, we have for energy worldwide speaking now?

David Blackmon [00:40:14] Well, if you have photos of al Gore, John Kerry and Klaus Schwab, that’s a really good start.

Irina Slav [00:40:21] And bureaucrats, bureaucrats we have.

Armando Cavanha [00:40:23] Oh, yeah. Uh,.

David Blackmon [00:40:25] Here we go.

Armando Cavanha [00:40:25] Yeah, yeah.

Irina Slav [00:40:26] System was.

Armando Cavanha [00:40:27] Yeah. Sorry. John Kerry is uh, is is living.

David Blackmon [00:40:32] So there they got to replace John Kerry with uh, I’m thinking it may be John Podesta. Right? I mean, he’s the next obvious candidate for that gig. Um, or the lady who was the EPA director under Obama. What was her name? Steve. I can’t remember.

Tammy Nemeth [00:40:46] Gina McCarthy.

David Blackmon [00:40:47] Gina McCarthy would be. Obvious choice. Yeah, yes. Thank you, Tammy.

Armando Cavanha [00:40:53] But we have energy security is a threat. Um, cyber security, that Stuart that mention before

David Blackmon [00:41:01] Cyber Security for sure is.

Armando Cavanha [00:41:02] For sure. Uh,

David Blackmon [00:41:04] No, uh. Lack of transformer supply. There’s a crisis in the supply of transformers on our power grid. It’s taking four years to source high voltage transformers, uh, in most instances now. And,

Tammy Nemeth [00:41:17] Well Think also of the threats.

Armando Cavanha [00:41:19] Yes. The U.S. election is, uh, something about the come. Yeah,

Tammy Nemeth [00:41:24] Yeah, well, there’s that and then there’s the all the stuff that’s going on in the Middle East with the shipping being, um, targeted. And so let’s say that your transformers are being built elsewhere and they eventually do get constructed. How do you get them to Europe or to North America? Well, they have ships, right? Slowly. And, uh, then that ends up being affected by. One of these choke points. Um, so we have the traditional kind of threats to energy, which is shutting off the transport and supply and whatnot. And then you have these additional, um, political threats. And then, of course, you have the weather threats.

Armando Cavanha [00:42:01] Red sea is a threat for energy now.

David Blackmon [00:42:05] Oh.

Irina Slav [00:42:06] There will always be some instability somewhere, right? Yeah, right. In that sense, offshoring is a good idea, but it’s a good idea. Theoretically, it’s not really applicable under all circumstances and by all countries because they don’t have all the resources they need.

David Blackmon [00:42:23] They don’t have the resources. Yeah. That’s why coal is so important in the developing world, because coal is the easiest, most cheapest source of reliable 24 seven power generation known to mankind. And that’s why coal isn’t going away.

Irina Slav [00:42:42] And it’s abundant.

David Blackmon [00:42:43] And it’s abundant. It’s everywhere

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:44] And into everywhere. I mean, look at Germany now that they’re reconsidering the shutting off of their coal power, now they want to maybe expand it. That’s awesome. Because they have a lot of it. Right. And a lot of the Eastern European countries have a lot of it.

Irina Slav [00:43:04] Yeah. It’s the dirtiest going to.

David Blackmon [00:43:07] Yep. By the way, Patrick Devine, at the end of my last rant, uh, gave me a line I’m going to steal. That was a circular rant. I appreciate that, Patrick. Let’s talk In a rant.

Armando Cavanha [00:43:17] Oh, yeah. Where? Oh, sorry.

David Blackmon [00:43:19] I’m stealing that one.

Armando Cavanha [00:43:21] Oh, yeah. It’s here Sorry. Yeah, I lost.

David Blackmon [00:43:24] It was definitely a circular rant.

Armando Cavanha [00:43:26] Yeah. Uh oh.

David Blackmon [00:43:30] It is interesting that only Western democracies are trying to implement the rush to renewables. They’re at risk of political insecurity as well as energy insecurity, which makes you have to wonder about the motivations behind all of this. Because the clear beneficiary of all of it. Well, there’s two mainly China, but also Russia. Those are the names that.

Irina Slav [00:43:52] China has the most wind farms and solar farms.

David Blackmon [00:43:56] That’s true. Yes, yes.

Irina Slav [00:43:58] China is building massive amounts of wind. It’s not just the West.

David Blackmon [00:44:04] Right.

Irina Slav [00:44:04] But it’s also. But they’re also seeing things locally.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:07] But they also build nuclear. And they also build coal.

Irina Slav [00:44:10] Exactly.

David Blackmon [00:44:14] That’s the. Difference.

Stuart Turley [00:44:17] Irina, what do you see in Europe? Um, from the grid stability and security in Europe. Um, our media shut it down. It’s. Germany is now a third world country again, and they’re now rebuilding, as Tammy brought out. But do you think Ursula and the other folks are going to be forcing the renewable stories again, tougher and even more.

Irina Slav [00:44:44] They have been doing it for years. No reason for them to stop now. But, uh, you know, the German farmers took to the streets because they wanted to remove the subsidies that are fuel subsidies. So, you know, if somebody tries to tell us, you have to learn to live with blackouts, I don’t think it’s going to go down well, but we’ve talked about it before is just it just has to get worse before it gets better. I mean, people need to feel the pain.

David Blackmon [00:45:15] Thank you for coming back, Irina, by the way. You never failed to correct. It never failed to correct me up there. Thanks, I love it.

Irina Slav [00:45:25] Thanks.

Armando Cavanha [00:45:26] But.

Irina Slav [00:45:27] Yeah, it’s.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:29] That’s part of the energy reality, right? Irina.

Irina Slav [00:45:31] Yeah. Exactly.

David Blackmon [00:45:33] Exactly.

Armando Cavanha [00:45:34] Yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:34] Unfortunately

Irina Slav [00:45:39] Yeah. Until we lose our comfort, we don’t care.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:43] Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:45:43] People don’t. Yeah. That’s right. Until the heat pump stops working.

Armando Cavanha [00:45:48] Yeah. That’s right.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:50] And then they’re plugging in the little base heater or something trying to keep warm in one room of their house. And then they wonder why their electricity costs go up.

Armando Cavanha [00:46:02] Uh. Another, comment of Jeffrey.

David Blackmon [00:46:06] Check that over, my man. How you doing, Jeff? There’s a good friend of mine from Houston who I haven’t seen in a since we moved up to to North Texas. Great guy. Uh, what? Uh, one of the most naturally funny people on the face of the earth is Jeffrey Vanover. I hope you’re doing well, Jeff.

Armando Cavanha [00:46:27] Uh, but I suppose to the conclusion Stuart David Irina and Tammy, that the most important threat that we have is mindset.

Stuart Turley [00:46:42] I vote Irane to go first.

Armando Cavanha [00:46:44] We all agree.

Stuart Turley [00:46:46] Uh, Irina. What? You what do you think?

Irina Slav [00:46:48] Well, that’s I absolutely agree. What I, uh, just said we’re stupid. And until we feel discomfort, we will not start thinking. Well, Present company excluded because by necessity or. But with desire. We want to know more about how energy works. But most of the people don’t care. I’m actually preparing a subset for this. I’m going to call it live among the zombies because when it comes to energy. There’s no thinking. And this is the biggest threat because it makes all the other threats possible. And amplifies them to different extents, but it amplifies them.

Tammy Nemeth [00:47:33] Yeah, because people don’t want to think they’re feeling. They feel so strongly about these issues and those feelings, you know,.

Irina Slav [00:47:41] Personal truths. Yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:47:42] Their personal truths. Their personal feelings.

Irina Slav [00:47:45] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:47:46] Well, maybe weeks know when when, uh, the Democrats succeed in tearing down the statue of Thomas Jefferson and the Jefferson Memorial, which is an inevitability, by the way, uh, maybe we can get that statue of Greta to replace her.

Irina Slav [00:48:00] Don’t say this Please .

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:00] Don’t say that.

Armando Cavanha [00:48:02] Thank you so much. It was a fantastic conversation this morning. Thank you.

David Blackmon [00:48:07] Yes it was. Thank you all.

Irina Slav [00:48:10] Have a great day

David Blackmon [00:48:11] Have a great week. Thanks for all the great comment.

Armando Cavanha [00:48:15] Thank you all.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:15] Thank you.

Irina Slav [00:48:16] Bye bye.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:17] See yah

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It’s a cautionary tale with a European twist and implications for Alberta.

Spain’s feet-first foray into renewable power has hit a snag after the country will be forced to dismantle more than 36% of its aging fleet of wind turbines within the next five years.

According to the national Wind Business Association (AEE), that amounts to around 7,500 towers, turbines and more than 20,000 blades that have to be dismantled, transported and recycled — a feat that poses significant cost and logistical challenges.

With the exception of the fibreglass blades, about 85% of components such as steel, copper wire and generators can be reused and the country is scrambling to build recycling plants and facilities to process them all. But the sticking point is the blades themselves, which only few landfills in the country and the EU will accept as waste.

Despite being 31% smaller than Alberta, Spain generates about 10 times more wind power.Cyprusandtaxi.com

According to the AEE, about one in three existing turbines was installed prior to 2005 and have an estimated working lifespan of 20-25 years.

That’s not stopping the government from moving ahead with ambitious plans to double its wind power target to 62 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 compared to nearly 30GW at present.

To meet it, developers would have to nearly triple the amount of annual installations to 4GW per year from the 1.4GW achieved in 2022. By contrast, Alberta had about 3.6GW of capacity in 2022, double the year before.

That’s despite the fact that Spain already has one of the most developed wind industries in Europe — indeed, the world — integrating almost the entire supply chain from manufacturing of the turbines themselves and the operation of more than 1,345 wind farms in 850 municipalities that cover an area barely two-thirds the size of Alberta.

And like Alberta, Spain is facing a public backlash over the proliferation of wind farms, their size and indirect impacts on issues like recycling and reclamation.

Nonetheless it is facing a growing backlash in provinces like Galicia that have imposed moratoria on new wind projects. Individual companies are also facing losses as power demand — and prices — fall and the domestic manufacturing plants face stiff competition from countries like China.

Overall energy demand was down almost 3% last year due to higher capital costs and energy efficiency measures amid a broader economic slowdown.

Industry experts are warning that the country’s ambitious targets can only be met if power demand is boosted — through the uptake of EVs — and expedited permit approvals.

Curtailments are creating “a headache for many investors,” Antonio de Juan Fernandez, the director of AFRY Management Consulting, told Reuters.

Spain is “building more and more megawatts of renewable energy… but to ensure that energy is injected into the power grid we need electric vehicles, storage, green hydrogen, and more connections with other countries to export power… that is not happening right now,” he said.

According to the AAE, the wind sector employs about 32,000 people and generates about 22% of Spanish electricity demand.

Source: Westernstandard.news

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Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) has announced the setting of the indicative price for Kuwaiti oil at $70 per barrel for the fiscal year 2024/2025, commencing this April.

This key financial indicator was reported by Al-Anba daily, which cited informed sources.

It should be noted that while KPC proposes this price, the final determination is subject to the comprehensive evaluation and adjustments of the Ministry of Finance during the formulation of the final State budget draft.

This pricing decision marks a notable trend, as it retains the $70 per barrel price point for the second consecutive year. The previous fiscal year, 2023/2024, also saw the same price level, even though the oil production volume was slightly higher at 2.676 million barrels per day. This contrasts with the 2022/2023 budget, where the indicative price was set at $80 per barrel, with an estimated production volume of 2.73 million barrels per day.

Further insights reveal that, according to the Ministry of Oil, Kuwait’s oil production from January to the end of March 2024 is projected to be around 2.413 million barrels per day. This production level aligns with the decisions made by OPEC+, which include a voluntary additional reduction of 135,000 barrels per day during this period.

The consistency in the indicative oil price, despite varying production volumes and market conditions, reflects KPC’s strategic approach to budgeting and financial planning. It also highlights the influence of global oil alliances like OPEC+ on national production decisions. The Kuwaiti government’s final stance on this estimate will be critical in shaping the financial landscape for the upcoming fiscal year.

Source: Oilandgasmiddleeast.com

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UPDATE: By 7:28 a.m., wind output fell to less than 1 per cent of capacity

One of the first lessons any new engineering student learns in their materials class is “cold brittle behaviour” of materials. When it gets really cold, like -30 C or colder, many materials lose much of their strength and are prone to shattering. This applies to wind turbines as much as it applies to car bumpers.

And as a result, most wind turbines are shut down when the ambient temperatures reaches around -30 C, lest their continued operation cause them to shatter. And such shutdowns were plainly evident the evening of Jan. 11, on both the Alberta Electric System Operator website and on Dispatcho.app. That’s a website that logs the minute-by-minute data published by the AESO regarding the Alberta electrical grid.

The screenshot above was captured at approximately 11 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 11. Temperatures were in the -28 to -30 C range for most of the areas of southern Alberta where the province’s 45 wind farms are located, according to Windy.com. That website is also very useful in showing windspeed and direction. And Windy.com showed that it wasn’t for lack of wind those farms were shutting down. Nearly every location still had 7 to 9 knots of wind. That’s not a lot, but it’s not nothing, either.

This screenshot from Windy.com at 11 p.m., Jan. 11, showed wind vectors and temperatures in southern Alberta, where nearly all of the province’s grid-scale wind generation is located. Windy.com

That was clearly indicated by Blackspring Ridge, which all by itself was providing roughly half of the roughly 400 megawatts of wind power in Alberta at the time. Located near Lethbridge, it was producing roughly two-thirds of its nameplate capacity, despite wind speeds of 7 knots and gusts up to 16 knots at Lethbridge, while the temperature was -28 C. Stirling Wind, on the other side of Lethbridge, was producing 47 megawatts just a few hours earlier, before dropping to 2 megawatts at 9 p.m.

In the hour that followed, Blackspring Ridge, too, appeared to be spinning down in a linear fashion, producing 79 megawatts at 12:15 a.m. And at 7:28 a.m., it was at one megawatt.

As all of this was taking place, the pool price for Alberta flowed around the $450 to $667 range. There was a sharp uptick in prices at 5 p.m., as demand was peaking and wind assets were increasingly going offline.

Wind output continued to fall throughout the night. As the workforce was warming up its morning breakfast and coffee, wind power generation had fallen to 37 megawatts out of an installed capacity of 4,481 megawatts. That’s 0.8 per cent, or eight one-thousandths of nameplate capacity, on one of the coldest days of the year, produced by hundreds of wind turbines across 45 wind farms costing billions of dollars.

By this point, temperatures across southern Alberta had fallen to -31 C in most locations, but wind was still 7-9 knots in most wind-producing locations, according to Windy.com.

And since the sun had yet to rise, solar output was zero, out of 1,650 megawatts.

And power pool prices were expected to spike throughout the day, according to X bot account @ReliableAB.

It also turns out Alberta set a record for peak demand on Jan. 11, according to the AESO:

White knight

There may soon be a white knight to the rescue, however, in terms of a massive new power combined cycle natural gas-fired station with two 450 megawatt generating units coming online for a total of 900 megawatts that will be both baseload and dispatchable. The Globe and Mail wrote about it here.

As described by Dispatcho.app, “Cascade 1 (CAS1) is a 450 MW natural gas combined cycle generator located in Yellowhead County, approximately 12 KM southwest of Edson, AB. This asset is located at the same facility as Cascade 2, which together cost ~$1.5B to build, and was connected to the grid in 2023. The facility is comprised of two Siemens SCC6-8000H gas turbines for a combined generation capacity of 900 MW. These turbines are designed for short start-up and ramp times which will help ensure a stable power grid in Alberta. This asset is owned by Kineticor.”

Cascade Unit 1 is still in startup phase, as Kineticor announced on LinkedIn on Jan. 10, “We are thrilled to announce that the Cascade Power Project has successfully delivered its first megawatt onto the Alberta Power Grid!”

However, the evening of Jan. 11, the AESO was showing Cascade Units 1 and 2 were not providing power at that time.

Meanwhile in Saskatchewan

In Saskatchewan, it was getting pretty cold as well, and it showed up in SaskPower’s grid demand webpage. At 7 p.m., that monitor showed SaskPower’s hourly average usage was 3,760 megawatts, just 150 megawatts shy of the all-time record established two years earlier, on Dec. 30, 2021. That, too, was a very cold night.

Source: Energynow.ca

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The post Most of Alberta’s Wind Fleet Slowly Shut Down Thursday Night, But Not for Lack of Wind – Find Out Why appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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Condo prices in Toronto carve out two-year low, house prices just a hair behind.

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UPDATE: By 7:28 a.m., wind output fell to less than 1 per cent of capacity

White knight

Meanwhile in Saskatchewan

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