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Brent and U.S. crude futures climbed more than 2.5%, gaining $2 a barrel on Monday, as further supply cuts in OPEC+ production are expected in the coming weeks.

Brent crude futures were up $2.19 to $82.80 a barrel by 10:32 a.m. CT (1632 GMT).

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was up $1.98, or 2.6% at $77.87.

The front-month December WTI contract expires later on Monday. The more active January futures gained $2.12 to $78.16, up 2.79%.

Both contracts settled 4% higher on Friday after three OPEC+ sources told Reuters that the producer group, comprising the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia, is set to consider whether to make additional supply cuts when it meets on Nov. 26.

Oil prices have dropped almost 20% since late September, while prompt inter-month spreads for Brent and WTI slipped into contango last week. In a contango market, prompt prices are lower than those in future months, signalling sufficient supply.

“In light of last week’s obliteration of oil bulls, some kind of response was forthcoming from the (OPEC) producer group,” said Tamas Varga of oil broker PVM.

“If additional cuts are agreed, a short-term price boost is expected, but its longer-term price impact seems dubious as enforcement and adherence will be the salient issue.”

Investors are also keeping an eye on Russian crude oil trade after Washington imposed sanctions on three ships that have sent Sokol crude to India.

On Friday, Moscow lifted a ban on gasoline exports which could add to global supplies of the motor fuel. That came after Russia scrapped most restrictions on exports of diesel last month.

The number of oil and gas rigs operated by U.S. companies rose last week, the first gain in three weeks, energy services business Baker Hughes said on Friday. The oil and gas rig count serves as an early indicator of future output.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil refiners are on course to boost production by 559,000 barrels per day (bpd) this week as they come out of fall planned maintenance leaving just 264,000 bpd of capacity offline, research company IIR Energy said on Monday.

In the Middle East, U.S. and Israeli officials said a deal to free some of the hostages held in the besieged Gaza enclave was edging closer despite fierce fighting.

 

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World Oil

(Bloomberg) — Kimmeridge Energy Management Co., which is among the most active and outspoken U.S. oil and gas investors, said a merger of Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Southwestern Energy Co. would create one of the industry’s most sought-after stocks.

“There are only a few must-own stocks in the sector, and this would ultimately be one of them,” Mark Viviano, a managing partner at Kimmeridge, said in a statement.

Bloomberg reported in October that Chesapeake is considering buying Southwestern through a deal that would create one of the largest U.S. natural gas producers. Kimmeridge is Chesapeake’s 13th largest shareholder. The companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite the spate of large deals over the last several weeks, the universe of shale drillers remains highly fragmented and more consolidation is necessary, Kimmeridge founder Ben Dell said in an interview.

While he’s not involved with the talks, Dell said he’s optimistic Chesapeake and Southwestern will eventually hammer out a deal. The roadblocks in such negotiations are typically “personal,” he said.

“My experience in M&A is that who survives from the board and who survives from management are the one and two sticking points,” Dell said. “It is almost never about actual economics.”

Merger and acquisition activity has been accelerating among shale drillers as the sector matures and companies begin to exhaust their portfolios of undrilled opportunities. As a result, executive teams seeking to shore up reserves to ensure ample, future production are buying up rivals.

Another potential deal that makes sense would be between Chord Energy Corp. of Houston and Calgary-based Enerplus Corp., Viviano said. Both have production in the Bakken shale formation of North Dakota, and a combination of them would create a $10 billion company that would establish a platform for consolidation across the basin, Viviano said.

Kimmeridge is the third-largest shareholder of Enerplus, owning about 3.4% of the stock.

Chord has a market value of about $6.8 billion. Enerplus, which is worth about $3.4 billion, would probably require a premium of about 15%, given its strong assets, Viviano said.

Chord and Enerplus didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kimmeridge held a 2.4% stake in Chesapeake as of Sept. 30 that at the current share price is worth roughly $260 million. The investor has increased its holdings in the stock by more than 60% since the first quarter of 2022.

Chesapeake and Southwestern are two of the biggest players in the Marcellus, a giant shale gas formation in the Northeastern U.S.. They also operate in the Haynesville, another gas-heavy basin along the Louisiana-Texas border. The way the two companies’ assets overlap make sense for a merger, and Chesapeake’s strong balance sheet would help Southwestern, Dell said. The companies’ positions in Haynesville are complementary, he said.

 

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Manage consent

 

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BEIJING, Nov 20 (Reuters) – The People’s Bank of China and the Saudi Central Bank recently signed a local currency swap agreement worth 50 billion yuan ($6.93 billion) or 26 billion Saudi riyals, both banks said on Monday, as bilateral relations continued to gather momentum.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, and China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, have worked to take relations beyond hydrocarbon ties in recent years, expanding collaboration into areas such as security and technology.

The swap agreement, which will be valid for three years and can be extended by mutual agreement, “will help strengthen financial cooperation… expand the use of local currencies… and promote trade and investment,” between Riyadh and Beijing, the statement from China’s central bank said.

China imported $65 billion worth of Saudi crude in 2022, according to Chinese customs data, accounting for about 83% of the kingdom’s total exports to the Asian giant.

Russia remained China’s top oil supplier in October despite higher prices for Russian crude, with Saudi imports down 2.5% from the previous month as it continued to restrict supply.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Gulf Arab leaders last December that China would work to buy oil and gas in yuan, but it has not yet used the currency for Saudi oil purchases, traders have said.

Beijing is thought to have the world’s largest network of currency swap arrangements in place, with at least 40 countries, but seldom reveals the broader terms of its arrangements.

“China seems to be using swap lines in a very different way to the U.S.,” said Weitseng Chen, associate professor at the National University of Singapore. “(China) uses it as a credit line, so it’s on a constant basis, instead of a one-time, one-off thing during a financial crisis.”

Argentina in October activated a currency swap line with China for the second time in three years to the tune of $6.5 billion to help increase its depleted foreign currency reserves in the midst of a major economic crisis, with annual inflation above 130% and central bank dollar reserves hitting negative levels.

($1 = 7.2111 Chinese yuan)

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The post China and Saudi Arabia set up currency swap line – Petro Dollar Dies Sooner Than Later appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

The regional electric grid operator in Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), sent a request to stakeholders earlier this year asking for more reserve generating capacity for this upcoming winter when electricity demand is typically at its highest.

The request specifically targeted decommissioned coal and natural gas plants owned by municipalities, wanting to bring these retired facilities back to service in order to power an additional 600,000 homes.

According to ERCOT, the request was fueled by the following factors:

Recent electricity demand increases
Recent and proposed retirements of coal and natural gas generation resources
Recent extreme winter weather events.

None of the decommissioned power plants decided to return to service, however, forcing ERCOT to cancel the request.

And this highlights the issue.

Backtracking on reliability isn’t an effective strategy

Policies that backtrack on reliability are never a real solution.

They’re good in the sense they recognize the reality of capacity shortfalls on the system, but bad in that they highlight the reality of a failing system — one that routinely fails to ensure consistently reliable and affordable electricity.

To put it frankly, we wouldn’t need to restart closed power plants if we weren’t retiring them in the first place.

It seems simple enough, but unfortunately, bad energy policies and net-zero commitments have been plaguing electricity markets for decades. These policies and commitments — ones that favor unreliable wind and solar energy sources over reliable thermal plants — have resulted in many reliable plants retiring prematurely and, to the frustration of ERCOT operators, remaining closed despite pleas to restart them.

This is a ridiculously inefficient and exhausting system, even if there had been enough capacity to match what ERCOT desired for reserves.

Mixed priorities

The traditional pillars of electricity market success — reliable and affordable — have taken a backseat to the new fade of our time: climate change action.

While the desire for a clean environment is perfectly fine, the short timelines alone to achieve net-zero (2030, 2040, 2050), put forth by state after state, are reflective enough of a doomsday mentality that has taken the reigns of energy policy in much of the country.

Serious proposals to affordably and reliably incorporate new “clean” energy sources (whether they be wind, solar, nuclear, etc.) would extend many decades into the future, taking into account the need to let existing plants operate throughout their useful lifetimes and allowing new or outdated technologies to mature.

Proposals such as this are extremely rare, however, because advocacy for renewables and climate catastrophizing virtually go hand-in-hand.

The idea that we need to radically change our electricity grid “before it’s too late” has resulted in questionable outcomes for hardworking families and businesses, including with the Comanche 3 coal plant in Colorado, originally designed to run until 2070, now being scheduled to retire by 2031 — robbing the customers who paid for it of nearly 40 years of affordable and reliable electricity from the facility.

Just ask Texas during the deadly blackouts of February 2021 how catastrophic these policies can be when left unchecked, where they resulted in the state relying entirely on intermittent wind energy to power its rapidly growing electricity needs.

Or, ask the other electricity regions in the country at the time, who, rather than having electricity to spare for Texas (even if they had the option to), were experiencing their own capacity emergencies and had to deploy rolling outages to thousands of customers.

NERC reliability reports suggest the same

Reliability reports from the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) say the same thing, as well, year after year.

Referring to Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the regional transmission operator (RTO) with the largest wind energy adoption as a percentage of total generation, NERC noted: “[E]nergy risks emerge during periods of low wind or forecast uncertainty and high electricity demand.”

Reliability first

I’ve modeled enough wind and solar hourly profiles to know that renewable droughts are far from just one-off events, as some claim.

Efforts by ERCOT to right the ship on Texas’ electricity grid are notable in that they recognize a severe issue. However, they seem to have come far too late and are a great example of why energy policy can’t be made on the fly.

If we don’t start planning for so-called once-in-a-lifetime events when it comes to electricity reliability, we’ll continue dealing with what were once considered once-in-a-lifetime blackouts.

Source: Americanexperiment.org

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The post ERCOT’s latest failure shows: we can’t backtrack on reliability appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

 November 20, 2023

Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-860M, Monthly Electric Power Industry Report

The average utilization rate (or capacity factor) for the entire U.S. fleet of combined-cycle natural gas turbine (CCGT) electric power plants has risen as the operating efficiency of new CCGT units has improved. The CCGT capacity factor rose from 40% in 2008 to 57% in 2022. Increased efficiency improved the competitiveness of newer CCGT units against other fuel sources and older CCGT units.

Two factors affect the utilization of a CCGT unit: the efficiency of the generator and the delivered cost of natural gas. More advanced H- and J-class natural gas turbine technology entered the market in the mid 2010s, increasing the efficiency of newer natural gas-fired power plants. Lower natural gas prices typically increase capacity factors at natural gas-fired power plants because the electricity generated is cheaper than from other sources, such as coal-fired plants. In 2012 and 2015, annual average capacity factors of CCGT units increased by more than seven percentage points when the annual Henry Hub natural gas price declined.

Grid operators generally dispatch generators sequentially from lowest to highest cost. Because CCGT units built between 2010 and 2022 typically have the lowest operating costs, they are dispatched more frequently compared with older CCGT power plants. In 2022, the capacity factor of CCGT units that began operations between 2010 and 2022 averaged 64%, compared with 55% for those that began operations between 2000 and 2009 and 35% for units that began operations between 1990 and 1999.

Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-860M, Monthly Electric Power Industry Report
Note: Time ranges based on operation start date. Btu/kWh=British thermal units per kilowatthour.

About one-half of today’s CCGT capacity was built between 2000 and 2006. This sudden increase in the number of CCGT plants was in response to power shortages that occurred in the late 1990s, coinciding with new and more efficient F-class natural gas turbines entering the market. Now, many of these CCGT plants are about 20 years old, which could lead to lower capacity factors as the units age.

Lower heat rates, the ratio of the amount of fuel required to generate a unit of electricity, are the result of increased efficiency of newer CCGT power plants. CCGT power plants built between 2010 and 2022 have the lowest average heat rate among all CCGT plants, at 6,960 British thermal units per kilowatthour (Btu/kWh) in 2022, which is 7% lower than units built between 2000 and 2009.

Principal contributors: Lindsay Aramayo, Mark Morey

 

The average utilization rate (or capacity factor) for the entire U.S. fleet of combined-cycle natural gas turbine (CCGT) electric power plants has risen as the operating efficiency of new CCGT units has improved. The CCGT capacity factor rose from 40% in 2008 to 57% in 2022. Increased efficiency improved the competitiveness of newer CCGT units against other fuel sources and older CCGT units. 

The post Natural gas combined-cycle power plants increased utilization with improved technology appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

In a recent Angus Reid Institute survey, Canadians were asked which political party they would prefer to manage the country’s climate change file. The winner was the Conservative Party of Canada; 28 per cent wanted the Tories, against 14 per cent who wanted the Liberal status quo.

What’s more, respondents were endorsing a version of the Conservative Party that has very explicitly not prioritized climate change. The Conservatives under leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole were very careful about stressing to the electorate that they cared about rising emissions and had a viable plan to bring them down.

 

But under Poilievre, there are no emissions targets and and he hasn’t released a climate change strategy. The party’s chief issue is abolishing the carbon tax, and whenever someone asks what policy will replace it, the Tory answer is “technology.”

“Small modular nuclear reactors, hydroelectric dams, tidal wave power and other emissions-free energy … get the government out of the way and speed up approvals to green-light green projects,” said Poilievre earlier this month.

And if polls are to be believed, none of this is holding back the Tories’ massive surge in popularity. After years of received wisdom that a Conservative could not become Canadian prime minister without an aggressive emissions plan, Poilievre is on course for one of the biggest landslides in the country’s history.

It’s just the latest sign that — after years of Canadians ranking climate change as one of their most pressing national issues — they suddenly seem to have lost interest.

When Trudeau was first elected prime minister in 2015, one of the Liberal Party’s strongest issues — and the one which they statistically had one of the largest mandates — was the issue of emissions reduction.

In the lead-up to the vote, an Angus Reid Institute poll found that 56 per cent of Canadians were frustrated that the Canadian government had not spent enough attention on climate change. One fifth of all respondents, meanwhile, reported that the climate would be a “deciding factor” in their vote.

Shortly after Trudeau’s victory, a Nanos poll found 73 per cent agreeing that “climate change presents a significant threat to our economic future.” Respondents even thought it had diplomatic consequences, with 79 per cent saying that Canada’s “international reputation” had been harmed by a lacklustre emissions reduction policy.

As to what’s changed in the last eight years, the main reason is likely that the country has been blindsided by a suite of affordability crises. Rent has reached all-time highs — and is still surging by an average of $175 per month. All the while, wages have been in decline for years and are on course for 40 years of sustained stagnation.

Now, when Canadians are asked to rank their top concerns, the top spot is a duel between “economy” and “cost of living” — with climate change lucky if it can crack the top five.

 

This is even true of young people; the one demographic that can usually be trusted to worry about the environment. In August, an Abacus Data survey of voters aged 18 to 27 found that the top concern, as picked by 73 per cent of respondents, was “the rising cost of living.” In fifth place — with just 29 per cent of respondents pegging it as a top three issue — was “climate change.”

 

Top three issues among Canadian voters aged 18 to 27. PHOTO BY ABACUS DATA

Canadians have also been increasingly asked to pay for their opinions on climate change. Carbon pricing was broadly popular when Trudeau took office; one survey had 56 per cent of Canadians supporting a price on emissions. As support has dwindled, it’s dropped in almost perfect tandem with the rate of Canadians actually paying the carbon tax.

This was most dramatic in Atlantic Canada, where good feelings on carbon pricing screeched to a halt on July 1 when it became the country’s last region added to the federal carbon pricing scheme.

None of this is to say that Canadians do not believe in climate change, or doubt that it’s the result of human-caused emissions. When queried on the basic science of the phenomenon, a rising share of Canadians think it’s a problem. But the sentiment appears to be that most Canadians don’t want to personally assume any measurable sacrifice or cost.

An Ipsos survey from September hinted at this odd duality. More than 60 per cent of respondents said that “the government” and “corporations” should do more to fight climate change, but large proportions also wanted affordability to take priority. “Yes, there is increased urgency to fight climate change, but there also is increased urgency to battle the affordability crisis that we’re seeing in Canada,” Ipsos Vice President of Public Affairs Sean Simpson told Global at the time.

That new Angus Reid Institute survey mentioned in the introduction asked this question as bluntly as it could, and the results were decisive.

On the statement, “cost of living concerns should come first, even if it damages policies to fight climate change,” 63 per cent said they agreed.

 

 

IN OTHER NEWS

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is kind of all over the place whenever he tries to weigh in on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Earlier this week he was delivering prepared remarks accusing the Israelis of recklessly killing women and babies. And then, on Thursday the Prime Minister’s Office released a statement that was almost a complete about-turn. Trudeau, said the statement, “expressed his unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ terrorist attacks, including the atrocious use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.” The statement added that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people nor their legitimate aspirations.” The occasion for the turnaround was Trudeau having a phone call with Israeli liberal politician Benny Gantz. While the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a decidedly conservative figure, Gantz is his more centrist rival – but has joined Netanyahu in a coalition government to destroy Hamas.

There aren’t many protest movements that target both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre with equal vigour. But only two days after 100 police responded to a mob of pro-Palestinian protesters at a Vancouver restaurant where Trudeau was dining, a clutch of demonstrators screaming “ceasefire now” interrupted a Poilievre rally in London, Ont. After saying Canada was a “free country” where everyone was entitled to their opinion, Poilievre told the group to “hit the road,” adding “the people support my agenda no matter how loud you scream.” PHOTO BY DEREK RUTTAN/LONDON FREE PRESS

Last Saturday, we covered the more influential signatories on a petition inked by more than 700 Canadian academics and lawyers which asserted that the Oct. 7 massacres need to be “contextualized,” rather than condemned. This week yielded an even more extreme petition, also with no shortage of prominent signatories. It accuses Israel of “genocide,” says it’s an “Islamophobia trope” to refer to Hamas as “terrorists,” and then calls it an “unverified accusation” that Hamas terrorists raped their victims. There’s plenty of evidence, both witness and forensic, on that last point, but it didn’t stop several women’s groups from signing on. This included the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre, and Sarah Bayliss, a self-described “family violence researcher.”

This is Austin Lathlin-Bercier, 25, from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba. Lathlin-Bercier was in Romania when the Russian invasion began, and was inspired to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Embassy has confirmed that Lathlin-Bercier was killed on Remembrance Day in fighting near Avdiivka, a city in the Ukrainian east that has been subject to an all-out attempt at capture by Russian forces. PHOTO BY HANDOUT

Plastic straws are back (sort of). Straws were among a handful of single-use plastic items (including grocery bags and stir sticks) that were banned by the Trudeau government under the assertion that they were “toxic” as defined by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. But a federal court just ruled that it’s “unreasonable and unconstitutional” to simply declare an entire class of consumer products as “toxic” without providing any compelling evidence as to why they’re toxic. While this certainly throws a wrench in the government’s plans to purge plastic straws from Canada, any sufficiently creative government lawyer can probably think of a new way to bring the hammer down on straw usage, which is why law professor Stewart Elgie told the National Post that (absent any legislative change) paper straws are probably here to stay.

This was the scene inside Scotiabank headquarters on Friday, as protesters refused to leave while accusing the bank of “genocide” via its investment in Israeli companies. Friday also yielded the police-assisted evacuation of a Toronto-area Hebrew school following a bomb threat. PHOTO BY X.COM

Source: Nationalpost.com

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For decades, the fruits of the fracking revolution, plus our newly minted status as the world’s top net exporter of natural gas, demonstrated that American consumers were swimming in bountiful energy.

But as the pandemic effects of supply chain shortages, the war in Ukraine, and higher government spending gave way to inflation hikes, suddenly all eyes were on utility bills. In 2021, Americans spent as much as 25% more on energy than in the previous year.

Compounding that problem for energy consumers are political pledges aimed at the “electrification of everything,” including massive subsidies for electric vehicles, home heat pumps, and solar panels in pursuit of a carbon neutral future.

Now state policies are accelerating that, as at least 22 states — plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. — have committed to either 100% carbon-free electricity generation or “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

But rather than subsidize our way toward political climate goals with foreign-made solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines, what if we looked to the new generation of a safe technology that is already the densest and carbon-free source of electricity in the world? What if it’s time to once again champion nuclear energy?

Energy investors, customers, and even green politicians should have every reason to love the atom. Nuclear energy is safe, clean, and reliable for decades. It produces no emissions and produces tens of thousands of good jobs for generations. There’s a reason nuclear plants have larger parking lots than wind turbines or solar farms.

At least three states — Illinois, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — currently generate over 50% of their electricity needs from nuclear power, making them effectively carbon neutral and an ideal hub for energy-intensive industry.

Even green warrior California Gov. Gavin Newson was forced to rethink the closing of Diablo Canyon in the face of aggressive climate goals, giving the state’s only nuclear plant a lifeline. Other states are reconsidering nuclear energy as their licenses head toward their expiration date.

That said, traditional nuclear energy faces several obstacles. Environmental and radiation concerns are invoked, though new innovations like accident-tolerant fuels have lessened the risk. Regulatory restrictions and permitting can delay approvals and renewals for up to a decade. Most importantly, nuclear projects are significantly labor and capital intensive, testing the financial limits of private investors and utilities who dip into subsidies to stay afloat.

But the age of the brutalist concrete cooling towers and highly centralized state control as the only features of nuclear power may already be over.

Next-generation nuclear energy technology — such as small modular reactors — may share the splitting of the atom with its predecessor, but its modern form is anything but.

SMRs can be as small as an SUV but still produce plenty of megawatts of energy. They can more quickly and reliably deliver power to the electric grid or industry, and in some cases, the spent fuel can be reused. SMRs could become the main carbon-free power source for a large manufacturing facility that would employ thousands of people and keep the load off residential grids.

For example, SMR developer X-energy is collaborating with chemical giant Dow to install  an advanced SMR nuclear plant at Dow’s manufacturing site in Seadrift, Texas. The Dow project is focused on providing its Seadrift site with safe, reliable, zero carbon emissions power and industrial steam as existing energy and steam assets near their end-of-life.

The project is contingent upon delivering on various reviews and approvals, as companies like Dow must follow strict timeframes to ensure continued operation of its site. X-energy first initiated NRC pre-application activities for their Xe-100 reactor in 2018.

Only one small modular reactor design, made by Oregon-based NuScale, has been certified by the National Regulatory Commission, which released its final rulemaking after a decade-long application process.

If we want to deliver energy at scale and at a low cost for millions of energy consumers, that pace will have to move to a warp speed timeline.

There are simple solutions that could save us time. Every state with an expiring nuclear license should consider supporting plant life extensions. States with anti-nuclear statutes should rethink their implications. Where possible, states should include nuclear and fusion technology within “clean energy” definitions, as North Carolina seems poised to do. The NRC should continue its steadfast efforts in reducing regulatory burdens to fast-track reviews and permits for new nuclear while still keeping a laser focus on safety.

Rather than closing coal plants without alternatives, states should quickly allow experienced project proponents to convert those facilities into nuclear stations. The US Department of Energy estimates that over 80% of the country’s existing coal plants could be cheaply converted into SMRs or advanced nuclear reactors, saving up to 35% in infrastructure costs while reducing emissions for decades. Roadmaps already exist to convert coal plant jobs to next-generation nuclear jobs.

This would represent billions in savings to energy customers, hundreds of thousands more good-paying jobs, and unlimited opportunities for innovators to unleash the next generation of nuclear power technology both domestically and as a global export.

Politicians and regulators have created the paradigm of a net zero world. Nuclear energy will enable that and provide prosperity, resilience, and sustainability that will keep us energy independent.

It’s time we recognize nuclear energy’s vital role and champion it as a force for good in our world.

Source: Realclearenergy.org

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The modern American version of “the environmental emperor has no clothes” until now has been the rise and fall of Enron. As former Ken Lay speechwriter Robert Bradley, Jr., says, “(T)he cause of Enron’s financial bankruptcy were at root philosophical…. Enron’s leaders were certainly engaged in massive philosophical fraud – an attempt to cheat reality itself.”

For years, Enron was hailed as one of the most forward-thinking corporations, and Lay, its founder and CEO, was a man in great demand. During his 13-year tenure that ended with a bang in 2021, Lay collected over $220 million in cash and company stock, and just months before “the largest bankruptcy in America” (at that time) Lay gave five presentations at the 2001 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

As Bradley, now the CEO of the Institute for Economic Research, recounts, Lay was the salesman promoting a business model developed by Jeffrey Skilling, who Lay had brought on as chief operating officer. In Skilling’s “mark-to-market” accounting, anticipated future profits from any deal were accounted for by estimating their present value rather than historical cost. Thus, argued Skilling, Enron did not really need “assets.”

It just needed connections.

And that was Lay’s special skill. His idea was to embrace a “revolution always” business philosophy, which Bradley called “a perpetual search for the first-mover advantage.” To that end, he became all things to all people, winning favor from Republicans, Democrats, environmentalists, minorities, and business leaders. His “illusion-making” in effect created a smokescreen so strong that nearly everyone was caught by surprise when the bubble burst.

[Editor’s note: As an environmental writer in Louisiana, I wrote in 1999 that the U.S. Senate rejection of the Kyoto Protocol would ensure Enron’s soon demise. I based my view on the fact that the company lacked assets and had built its presumed net worth on Kyoto largesse. As Bradley points out, Enron relied heavily on government favors.]

Today, the collapse of FTX and the recent criminal conviction of founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (who is facing a lifetime behind bars) brings Enron, Skilling, and Lay to mind. But, despite the magnitude of SBF’s fraud, it pales in comparison to the ongoing fraud being perpetrated mostly on America and its Western allies in the name of “climate change.”

A bit like FTX, but unlike Enron, there are plenty of warning signs that the “Green Revolution” is about to come tumbling down and its loudest advocates brought to account. The main thing keeping the mirages afloat today is the massive egos and their investments in folly that may leave them going down with the ship.

While the “Green Revolution” has been under way for decades, it is the Biden Administration that has imposed mandates, attacked popular energy sources and transportation options, and waged war against traditional industrial development. Europeans and states like California had earlier imposed their own mandates with supposedly “hard” deadlines for abolishing the use of oil, natural gas, coal, and every tool or vehicle that uses them.

The green war on fossil fuels, as fleshed out in the “Net Zero” campaign, is perhaps history’s greatest example of philosophical fraud.

“To dream the impossible dream” and turn it into reality would mean sacrificing an estimated 6,000 useful products that rely on byproducts from crude oil refineries – products that range from asphalt for highways to fertilizers, cosmetics, synthetic rubber, medicines and medical devices, cleaning products, plastics, so many more. The 3 billion who live without the benefits fossil fuels have provided are also the poorest, sickest, and most vulnerable humans on the planet.

Cracks are already developing in the “Net Zero” world, what with countries backing away from the mandates they so recently touted while marching around like peacocks in mating season. In March the European Union reached an agreement with Germany to formally back away from its total ban on internal combustion engines in 2035.

Still, 30 countries are signatories to the Glasgow Declaration that would force all vehicles sold by 2040 to have zero carbon dioxide emissions, and 21 others have crafted plans to ban new ICE vehicle sales earlier than 2040. Dozens of major cities and states, most notably California and the California clone states, intend to disallow new ICE vehicles by 2035.

Several problems stand in the way of their utopian dream. Even EV advocates are now admitting the “EV-olution” has to overcome “serious issues” – like the use of child labor in lithium mining, the woefully inadequate EV charging infrastructure, and an unprepared power grid. Yet the biggest obstacle is that a majority of the Earth’s people object to having EVs – or heat pumps, or electric stoves, and so on — shoved down their throats.

EVs may be fine for short-trip urban travel but not for construction equipment, airplanes, or even urban buses, as evidenced by the recent horrific scene in San Francisco when a Google-operated electric bus lost power and slid backwards downhill into nine vehicles. Today’s EVs are wholly impractical for mountain and prairie residents or others making long trips (worse with children).

Like Ken Lay with Enron, the Green revolution has relied heavily on government subsidies and a “revolution always” business philosophy aimed at making pariahs of anyone who dares oppose the grandiose – but fatally flawed – plan.

During the Obama Administration, Solyndra went under despite a $535 million government-guaranteed loan, none of which was paid back. Forbes, citing OpenTheBooks.com, noted that taxpayers were left holding the notes for $400 million given to Abound Solar, $280 million wasted by CaliSolar, $193 million doled out to Fisker Automotive (with another $336 million canceled), and $132 million to A123 Systems (a failed battery maker).

Undaunted, the Biden Administration’s $2.3 trillion “jobs” package was rife with more subsidies for technologies that by their own admission are unsustainable. Yet despite all the free money, Ford, General Motors, and many other automakers are backing away from multibillion-dollar investments in new EV factories as new EV sales have slowed despite increased rebates.

Ford in March projected a loss of $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, offsetting profits of as much as $14 billion from its other divisions. Ford also admitted losses of $900 million in 2021 and $2.1 billion in 2022 in its EV division. Ford and GM believe their EV fortunes will turn around by 2025, but those rosy scenarios seem wholly dependent upon Biden (or an even “greener” Democrat) winning the White House next November.

Even with a Green win in 2024, reality will still bite the EV dream. China has been quietly moving toward total dominance in the global EV marketplace – largely because it controls the lithium battery market. Financial Times wrote in September that China is so far ahead in the EV market that its competitors are trailing in the dust.

Biden’s reliance on huge subsidies to underwrite the “Green Revolution” has brought soaring inflation to the U.S. that is taking away purchasing power faster than it can increase subsidies and Mafia-style “incentives” (you will buy what we want you to buy, or else!).

Lay died of a heart attack shortly after his trial, leaving behind “a legacy of shame” characterized by “mismanagement and dishonesty” that led Politico to rank him as the third-worst American CEO of all time.

America’s doddering President Biden, now facing pre-impeachment hearings for other alleged mistakes, may not live to see his name smeared as Lay’s once was. But does anyone truly believe Biden is calling all the shots here?

Who will, then, get the blame if America’s forced march to EV subservience to Xi’s China brings an end to America’s hegemony on the world stage?

Source: Realclearwire.com

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When an Appalachian-based company begins operations at a Wyoming coal mining site late this year, the energy and enthusiasm around the work may focus more on its energy transition potential than old-school fossil fuel.

Ramaco Resources has its board approval to begin work at the Brook Mine property in Sheridan, Wyoming this quarter. The Kentucky company acquired the mine for coal, but subsequently discovered potentially vast amounts of rare earth and magnet materials, which could play a huge role in the supply chain for electric vehicles, wind power generators, and multiple other uses in the military, health care, and clean energy sectors.

The find was announced this May after extensive core sampling work was done by Ramaco, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), and mining consulting firm Weir International. If confirmed and backed up by production, this would make Brook Mine the first new rare earth mining site in the U.S. since Mountain Pass in California 71 years ago.

The global supply chain surrounding rare earth metals, in the wake of the Covid pandemic and geopolitical crises, could impede the speed of the energy transition to lower carbon resources such as EV drivetrains and utility-scale renewable projects. Some companies are developing lithium mining sites domestically to boost the supply chain for EV batteries.

Unlocking a vast new reservoir of rare earth elements stateside, however, could be a game changer. Ramaco says new tests indicate a future reserve as much as 50% higher than originally estimated, or close to 1.2 million metric tons. The materials analyzed indicate strong presence of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, as well as secondary magnetic rare earth ores including samarium, gadolinium, and holmium.

Image credit Weir International

The first four elements noted in the Ramaco announcement are all crucial in the production of permanent magnets used in EV drivetrains and wind turbines. They also could play a role in materials needed for commercial-scale microgrids which include solar and battery storage.

Ramaco CEO Randall Atkins, a former Wall Street banker, talked about the find and its future impact Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box morning show. Atkins expressed optimism about the Brooks Mine project but urged caution, noting that rare earth ore was a much more diffused element to collect than simply mining coal.

Although it’s in early stages and production of such diffused materials is problematic, the find could be worth close to $37 billion in value, according to reports.

Despite this discovery, the nations with the highest reserves of rare earth elements remain China, Vietnam, Brazil, Russia, India, and Australia, according to reports.

Source: Energytech.com

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The post Vast Reserves of Rare Earth Metals Found at Wyoming Coal Mine appeared first on Energy News Beat.