Energy News Beat

(WO) – Western Energy Alliance won a significant victory in court last Friday as the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the first onshore oil and gas lease sales of the Biden administration, held in June 2022.

Judge Christopher Copper ruled in favor of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) greenhouse gas (GHG) analysis that served as the basis of the sale of 162 leases in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. The Alliance’s intervention in the case to support BLM was pivotal, as the judge relied heavily on the trade association’s arguments on the type of climate change analysis necessary for lease sales to go forward.

“After President Biden’s unlawful leasing ban issued his first week in office was overturned in court, the first sales were finally held in June 2022. Of course, anti-oil-and-gas groups who want absolutely no development absolutely anywhere, immediately sued,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Alliance.

“Our legal team argued that the Biden administration’s own interagency working group, comprised of every relevant department in the Executive Branch including the Environmental Protection Agency, has been unable to define what level of emissions is significant in NEPA analyses.

“It is illogical to expect BLM, which is the expert agency on land management but not the government’s climate change scientific research agency, to do so on its own. The judge relied heavily upon Western Energy Alliance’s expertise in his ruling, citing our legal brief’s arguments on social cost of carbon analysis and the lack of BLM’s authority to set a carbon budget.

“Oil and natural gas developed on federal lands is some of the most sustainably produced in the world, subject to many more environmental protections than nonfederal lands and especially in comparison to other major producing countries.

“If we don’t produce it on federal lands, we must produce it elsewhere or import it from overseas, where GHG intensity is higher. With the continued lack of an alternative that does everything that oil and natural gas do, environmental groups like the plaintiffs we defeated in court continue to advance unrealistic energy policies that are worse for the environment and would result in higher levels of GHG emissions.”

Source: Worldoil.com

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French lender Credit Agricole has declared it will no longer finance the Rovuma LNG project in Mozambique and the Papua LNG project in Papua New Guinea.

The bank cited its commitments to reduce exposure to the oil and gas industry as the basis for its decision, according to a Reuters report on the news.

Rovuma LNG and Papua LNG are two of the largest liquefied natural gas projects in progress, with the companies involved including Exxon, TotalEnergies, Eni, and Australia’s Santos.

Environmentalists welcomed the decision, commenting that it would be challenging for the energy companies to find an alternative bank to step in.

Exxon, the leader on the Rovuma project was expected to make the final investment decision on the project next year but this could change now. TotalEnergies, which leads the Papua LNG project had also planned on making the FID on the venture next year.

Credit Agricole is moving away from LNG just as demand forecasts for the superchilled fuel brighten, with Shell recently forecasting demand will surge by 50% in the next 16 years. Africa has abundant but underdeveloped gas resources that projects such as Rovuma and Papua were going to tap, helping the economies of Mozambique and Papua with a new and potentially huge revenue stream.

Credit Agricole, however, announced last December it was going to stop funding new oil and gas ventures in line with its net-zero commitments. The bank also said it would triple the amount of money it invests in transition-related technologies. Plans are to boost its exposure to alternative sources of energy by 80% over this year and next, expanding it to $13.3 billion euro.

“We need to massively invest in renewable energy and the energy sobriety in order to decarbonize the economy,” the bank’s chief executive Phillippe Brassac said at the time.

Source: Oilprice.com

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HOUSTON — As president, Donald Trump vowed to unleash American “energy dominance,” while on the campaign trail, he has summarized his energy policies with the slogan “drill, baby, drill.”

Yet a possible Trump victory in the 2024 election is not delighting oil and gas executives as much as one might expect, according to interviews with several industry leaders at a recent energy conference in Houston.

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Fossil fuel firms have found a lot to like in President Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has vowed to unravel. The law offers lucrative tax credits for companies to capture and store carbon dioxide — subsidies that several oil giants are eager to exploit, even as they pump record amounts of crude oil and post near-record profits.

In addition, Trump has championed an “America First” approach to trade policy that prioritizes steep tariffs on imported goods. The approach could hike the costs of building new pipelines and other energy infrastructure, and it could heighten anxieties about a global trade war.

Still, fossil fuel executives have slammed Biden’s decision to pause approvals of new liquefied natural gas exports. And during the GOP presidential primary, oil barons filled Trump’s campaign coffers far more than those of his competitors.

If a poll were conducted among energy executives about the 2024 election, the results “would be a little more balanced than people might expect,” Alan Armstrong, president and CEO of the gas pipeline company Williams, said in an interview at CERAWeek by S&P Global.

Armstrong said many fossil fuel executives feel the Biden administration has unfairly demonized their industry because of its role in causing climate change. But that’s a personal sentiment, not a professional one, he said.

“If you’re asking people personally, they’re probably tired of being told they’re bad people by the current administration,” Armstrong said. “But from a business objective standpoint, it would be a much more balanced perspective.”

Support for subsidies

Trump plans to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, including its generous tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles, should he return to the White House, according to senior campaign officials and advisers to the former president.

Yet several oil industry executives have praised the Inflation Reduction Act — the IRA for short — for helping their companies pursue still-unproven green technologies such as carbon capture and clean hydrogen. The subsidy for carbon capture has especially benefited ExxonMobil, CEO Darren Woods acknowledged at CERAWeek.

ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston on March 18. (Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images)

“I was very supportive of the IRA — I am very supportive of the IRA — because as legislated the IRA focuses on carbon intensity and in theory is technology-agnostic,” Woods said. “They’re not trying to pick a particular technology.”

Vijay Swarup, Exxon’s senior director of climate strategy and technology, added that the IRA is “getting projects to advance.” Exxon has signed contracts to store the carbon captured from an ammonia plant and a steel plant in Louisiana, as well as a yet-to-be-built hydrogen plant in Texas, Swarup said in an interview.

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Of course, Trump could not unilaterally repeal the IRA subsidies. He would need Congress to pass legislation, meaning Republicans would need to maintain control of the House and retake the Senate, in addition to clinching the White House.

In that scenario, Mike Sommers, president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, said the trade group would aggressively lobby against any proposals to scrap green subsidies that have helped the industry.

“I suspect that when there is an attempt to repeal the IRA — and there will be — it will end up looking more like a scalpel-like approach rather than a butcher knife,” Sommers said. “And we’ll advocate for the provisions that we support.”

Tensions over trade

While in the White House, Trump proclaimed himself a “Tariff Man” — and he has no intention of abandoning that self-appointed title if reelected.

Publicly, Trump has floated the idea of imposing a 10 percent tariff on every good coming into the United States. Privately, he has discussed with advisers the possibility of imposing a flat 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, The Washington Post previously reported.

At a rally in Ohio this month, Trump also pledged to slap a 100 percent tariff on Chinese vehicle imports — part of a broader tirade in which he warned of a “bloodbath” for the U.S. auto industry if he is not reelected.

Sommers said such proposals, which are widely viewed as likely to spark a global trade war, carry “risks” for his sector.

“Particularly for the products that are produced here in the United States, we need free trade for these goods to flow,” he said. “I think we are concerned about kind of a retrenchment to a more nationalistic approach on trade policy. So that’s one example of an area where we’re not going to be aligned with a potential President Trump.”

But Dan Eberhart, chief executive of the oil-field services company Canary and a Trump supporter, said he isn’t worried about the former president’s trade policies. He said any adverse impact of tariffs would be canceled out by other pro-fossil-fuel policies, such as more offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico.

“In general, I don’t like protectionist policy,” Eberhart said. “But I really think that the Trump administration will be more pro-oil and gas than the Biden administration.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to specific questions for this story. In an emailed statement, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that “on day one, President Trump will unleash American Energy to lower inflation for all Americans, pay down debt, strengthen national security, and establish the United States as the manufacturing superpower of the world.”

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Washingtonpost.com

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“In Texas, ex-oil and gas workers champion geothermal energy as a replacement for fossil-fueled power plants” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

STARR COUNTY — In 2009, on a plot of shrub-covered cattle land about 45 miles northwest of McAllen, Shell buried and abandoned a well it drilled to look for gas. The well turned out to be a dry hole. Vegetation grew back over the site.

In 2021, a Houston-based energy company run by former Shell employees came looking for it.

This company wasn’t drilling for oil or gas, though. Its engineers were looking for a place to experiment with their technology for producing geothermal energy, created by Earth’s underground heat.

A startup called Sage Geosystems leased the site. The company installed a wellhead and brought in a diesel-powered pump. They used fluid to create cracks in the rock deep below the surface, a technique similar to fracking for oil and gas.

One day last March, the crew pumped 20,000 barrels of water into the 2-mile-deep well. Hours later, an operator opened the well from a control room. Pipes above ground shook as the pressurized water gushed back up. The water spun small turbines, generating electricity.

The pressurized water, which was pumped underground and later released to the surface through the well on the right, at the Starr County demonstration on March 22, 2023. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune
The turbine demonstration, which shows that they can convert pressure energy into mechanical and generate energy, on March 22, 2023. Credit: Veronica G. Cardenas for the Texas Tribune
Pump operator Cory Davis, 31, monitors the flow-back of the well that generates electricity. Credit: Veronica G. Cardenas for the Texas Tribune

Left: Water spins a turbine at the Starr County demonstration site. Right: An operator controls the flow in and out of the well. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

Sage and other companies believe geothermal power is key to replacing polluting coal- and gas-fired power plants. Even though solar and wind are proven clean energy sources, they only produce electricity when the sun shines or the wind blows. Geothermal power could provide continuous, emissions-free energy.

“Geothermal heat doesn’t have those variable conditions,” University of Texas at Austin clean energy expert Michael Webber said. “If you hit a hot spot below ground — might be thousands of feet down — the heat won’t matter based on whether it’s cloudy or whether it’s summer.”

Texas has become an early hot spot for geothermal energy exploration. At least three companies are based in Houston, and scores of former oil industry workers and executives are taking their knowledge of geology, drilling and extraction to a new energy source.

“We’ve punched over a million holes in the ground in Texas since Spindletop,” said former Texas oil and gas regulator Barry Smitherman, who has become a geothermal advocate. “So we have a lot of knowledge, and we have a lot of history and skill set.”

Heat constantly radiates out from the center of Earth as radioactive elements break down. That energy warms water that bubbles up to or escapes as steam at the surface. Humans have taken advantage of that phenomenon — an early form of geothermal power — for heating, bathing and cooking since ancient times.

For more than 100 years, engineers have used that underground hot water or steam to generate electricity. Geothermal power in 2015 fueled 27% of the electricity in Iceland, which sits on one of the world’s most active volcanic zones. In 2022, it generated about 5% of the electricity in California. The United States is the top geothermal electricity producer in the world.

Still, the total amount of geothermal electricity produced in America is tiny compared with other sources. It accounted for about 4 gigawatts last year, according to a federal analysis, or enough to power about 800,000 Texas homes.

Businesses such as Sage and government researchers say there’s a lot more geothermal power to be had by pumping fluid through hot rock where there is no natural water. With technological advances, a government analysis predicts geothermal power in the U.S. could grow to 90 gigawatts by 2050. That would have been enough to power the entire Texas grid during last summer’s highest-demand day.

Companies are racing to develop their technology and techniques to harness this energy source. They vary in how deep they want to drill (from around 7,000 feet, which oil and gas equipment can handle, to 66,000 feet, which it cannot), how they heat the water (in the well or in the rock) and how they bring the heated water back up (in the same well that sent it down or with a second one).

Like oil wildcatters, the geothermal industry must figure out the best places to drill. They’ll face the same concerns about triggering earthquakes that have dogged oil and gas fracking operations and previous geothermal efforts. In 2006, a pilot geothermal plant in Switzerland caused a magnitude 3.4 earthquake that damaged buildings and led to the plant’s closure. In 2017, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake linked to a pilot geothermal project in South Korea injured dozens.

Companies should follow existing best practices informed by research to monitor seismicity and adjust or pause operations as needed, said William Ellsworth, an emeritus professor at Stanford University. States could also mandate these protocols. “You have to pay attention to what you’re doing,” Ellsworth said.

And perhaps most importantly, the geothermal businesses will have to show they can compete with the cost of other power sources, with help from the federal government in the form of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

The more the technology is deployed, the more the costs might come down, Rice University Associate Professor Daniel Cohan said. Getting the price where the federal government hopes for it to be cost-competitive is “feasible,” Cohan said, “but there’s no guarantee that the industry will get there.”

The federal Department of Energy said this month that $20 billion to $25 billion needed to be invested by 2030 to move toward widespread use.

“We’re all doing something a little bit different,” Sage CEO Cindy Taff said. “One of us is going to have a breakthrough that really commercializes this stuff.”

The daughter of a geophysicist who worked for Mobil, Taff studied mechanical engineering and built a 36-year career at Shell. She worked her way up from production engineer to vice president, managing a team with an annual budget of around $1 billion.

Taff explains how Sage Geosystems uses its Starr County well to store energy. Credit: Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

With freckles and curly hair that falls past her shoulders, Taff said she knew the world wanted to pivot to new energy sources. Her daughter, concerned about climate change, urged her mother to get away from the “dark side” of oil and gas.

When former colleagues from Shell told Taff they were co-founding Sage and invited her to join them, she got excited.

Taff saw that Sage was a nimble company with people she considered some of the smartest in the industry. The geothermal business had a lot of growing to do, like the early days of wind or solar. Her work could have a large impact.

“It was exciting to be working with people that I knew had a sense of urgency and made a difference,” Taff said. “And then, it was exciting to be working for yourself in a way that you can push the agenda.”

So, in 2020, Taff took the leap. Her daughter joined the company too.

Building interest in geothermal

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 11 million gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska, killing some 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters and 300 harbor seals. In Augusta, Georgia, 10-year-old Jamie Beard was riveted by the news coverage.

“I understood things enough to know that that was not something we wanted,” Beard said.

That experience pushed Beard into environmental activism, starting the next day, when she took a Kleenex box decorated like the ocean to raise money for coral reefs. She painted murals about environmental rights. In college, at Appalachian State University, she organized an Earth Day festival and tied herself to trees on a West Virginia mountaintop to protest workers scraping them away to mine for coal.

Years before Jamie Beard helped launch Sage Geosystems, she was a student at Appalachian State University teaching others how to use solar ovens. Credit: Courtesy of Jamie Beard

Beard went on to study environmental law at Boston University. She represented corporations, telling herself she could make change best from the inside. That proved incorrect. She joined a startup working on technology that could be applied to geothermal drilling.

That’s when her life changed.

Beard read an interview about the huge potential for geothermal power to provide electricity around the world. The interview was with Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jefferson Tester, who led a team that published a 372-page assessment of the resource for the federal government in 2006.

“The technology needed to advance … but it wasn’t like it had to invent a whole new area because it’s so compatible with what we do with hydrocarbon extraction,” Tester said in an interview with the Texas Tribune. “They drill holes in the ground and they pull fluids out of the ground, whether they’re gas or liquids, and they sell it. Well, that’s what you do for geothermal too.”

Beard read the report over and over.

This is my career, Beard thought.

The history of modern geothermal power went back a century: The world’s first full-scale geothermal power plant started operating in 1913 in Italy. In 1960, Pacific Gas and Electric built the first commercial geothermal power plant in the United States at a spot in Northern California known as “The Geysers.”

In the 1970s, the federal Department of Energy started researching pulling power from what was referred to as hot, dry rock. The country that decade suffered through Arab countries’ embargo on exporting oil to America, causing oil prices to skyrocket. Still, the technology didn’t get far enough for the concept to take off.

The Larderello geothermal power plant, which is the world’s oldest, was built in Tuscany, Italy. Credit: Enel Green Power

Engineers built geothermal power plants where they could find existing water resources relatively easily, maybe marked by hot springs or fumaroles, which are holes where hot gases and vapors escape from underground, said Lauren Boyd, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s geothermal technologies office. But building new plants got riskier as prime locations got harder to find.

Beard saw opportunity. She knew the oil and gas industry could develop technology quickly. The U.S. ushered in the “shale revolution” as companies drilled horizontally and cracked open rock with hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, to extract giant amounts of oil and gas. That technology could be used for geothermal.

Beard, 45, is the type of person who speaks with an energy that rubs off on you. Her hair is cut into an angular bob; she wears artsy glasses. She made giving a TED talk look easy.

Armed with a $1 million Department of Energy grant, Beard moved to the University of Texas at Austin around 2019 to convince people that now was the time to start a geothermal company. She argued that oil and gas experts did not have to be only the villains in the climate change story; they could also be the people who help alleviate it.

Jamie Beard speaks at a SXSW panel titled “Geothermal and the Promise of Clean Energy Abundance” on March 9 in Austin. Credit: Courtesy of Jamie Beard

“Oil and gas people are a gigantic brain trust,” Beard said. “They are a huge asset.”

Beard had a young son. She learned he inherited a rare genetic condition that gave him a life expectancy of 10 or so years. A journalist from Wired who profiled Beard described a woman facing an existential choice: She could let the doom of his fate swallow her, or focus on changing the world.

Beard started by reaching out to industry veterans whom she suspected were retired, golfing and bored. Maybe their grandchildren were after them for being part of the fossil fuel industry that contributes to climate change.

Beard said she spent months talking with people like Lance Cook, who retired from Shell as a vice president. Beard said the reaction she usually got was “it’ll never work,” followed by a phone call a few weeks later that the person was still thinking about it. But Cook decided to jump in, and he became the chief technology officer for a new company named for Beard’s son, Sage.

Chris Anderson, the leader of TED, known for its conferences with TED talks by experts on various topics, invested $16 million through his climate investment fund. Drilling firm Nabors invested $9 million more.

Early successes

Beard wasn’t the only person who saw the potential of leveraging expertise from the oil and gas industry to develop geothermal in Texas.

Tim Latimer grew up in a city of about 1,000 residents in Central Texas, where he remembers being fascinated by the Discovery Channel show “Build It Bigger” about constructing large projects that impact many lives, such as bridges, tunnels and dams.

Latimer studied mechanical engineering at the University of Tulsa. He wanted a job back in Texas to be near family and friends, so when he graduated in 2012 he went to work on drilling sites while the shale revolution was taking off.

Latimer considered whether he should be working in fossil fuels in a world confronting climate change. But working on rapidly developing technology alongside smart people excited him. Moving into wind or solar didn’t feel right after years studying drilling.

Fervo CEO Tim Latimer at the Fervo Energy office in Houston on March 22. Credit: Mark Felix for the The Texas Tribune

Then came the lightbulb moment. He found the same 2006 geothermal report that inspired Beard. He realized that what he was doing, which included drilling into high-temperature rock in South Texas, presented what he called a “huge opportunity for tech transfer” into geothermal.

Latimer thought the idea was so obvious he could join a geothermal company already doing it. He found none. What if this could change how the world gets energy and no one tried it? he wondered. Like other startup founders, he’s articulate and dreams big. At a conference where some wore suits, he wore sneakers, a button-down and jeans.

Latimer went to Stanford University Graduate School of Business and met a classmate getting a PhD in geothermal research. Together they started Fervo Energy. They headquartered the business in Houston. Their first Houston-based hire had 15 years of experience working for oil and gas companies Hess and BP. Fervo now employs 80 people, about 60% of whom came from oil and gas work.

Fervo’s approach is basically to drill vertically, then use fracking technology to create horizontal cracks in the earth. That way, operators can send water down the well, where it can flow through the small cracks in the rock to heat before coming back up another nearby well.

Two California energy providers have signed contracts to buy power from Fervo. Google also has a financial agreement with them. Oil and gas company Devon Energy Corporation invested $10 million.

Last summer, Fervo ran a 30-day test in 375-degree rock in Nevada. They deemed it a success, and now the company is building a project nearby in Utah, next to where the Department of Energy has sponsored a geothermal field lab. They expect the project will put power mostly onto the California grid in 2026.

Drilling deeper

Back in Houston, in a beige set of warehouses on the south side of town, another company led by former oil and gas experts is taking a third approach.

Henry Phan left a 19-year career in product development at Schlumberger, where his work included designing drilling equipment that could steer sideways, to join a former colleague who launched Quaise Energy. The company focuses on using millimeter waves — which are higher frequency microwaves like the ones used to heat food — to create wells by vaporizing rock.

Henry Phan, vice president of engineering for Quaise Energy, stands with a wave guide that the company uses to direct waves from the surface into the hole they are creating, in Houston on Feb. 15, 2024. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune
Employees of Quaise Energy stand next to a repurposed drilling rig that will hold a wave guide. Credit: Contributor
Vaporized basalt rock from testing at Quaise Energy in Houston. Credit: Contributor

First: Employees of Quaise Energy stand next to a repurposed drilling rig that will hold a wave guide. Last: Vaporized basalt rock from testing at Quaise Energy in Houston. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune

Oil and gas equipment begins to fail when temperatures below ground reach around 400 degrees. Drill bits wear down quickly against harder rock and electronics are pushed past their limits. Using millimeter waves would allow operators to “drill” deeper than oil and gas equipment can go — which means reaching hotter rock that could produce more power.

The idea interested Phan, and he thought the physics made sense. Plus, he would work on cutting-edge technology that he thought could be a “big step change for humanity.” Quaise had a lot less bureaucracy than at the giant Schlumberger, where money going into product development seemed to be diminishing. In 2020, he signed on as Quaise’s vice president of engineering. He brought more former colleagues with him.

Quaise aims to be able to drill into 300 to 500 degree rock by 2026, produce steam that can generate electricity by 2028 and go commercial after that. Their investors include Nabors, climate investors Prelude Ventures and billionaire Vinod Khosla.

In early experiments with the technology, they used millimeter waves to “drill” through an eight-foot cylinder of basalt rock, plus samples of 1- to 2-inch-thick basalt. The examples sit on display in their office.

“It’s cool to work on a new product,” Phan said, “but the fact that it can make an impact to … our life and our children’s life and their generation and their kids is monumental. So it’s rewarding from the point of view that we’re working on something that is so impactful if we can make this thing work.”

Source: Gilmermirror.com

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The post In Texas, ex-oil and gas workers champion geothermal energy as a replacement for fossil-fueled power plants first appeared on Energy News Beat.

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The Tennessee State Senate has taken a definitive stance against the controversial topic of “chemtrails” by passing SB 2691/HB 2063.

The bill, which aims to ban the intentional release of chemicals into the atmosphere for geoengineering purposes, was sponsored by Representative Monty Fritts (R-Kingston) and Senator Steve Southerland (R-Morristown) and won approval in the Senate on Monday, The Tennessean reported.

The legislation is predicated on the claim that “it is documented the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government’s behalf or at the federal government’s request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee.”

This new bill seeks to outlaw any such activities, stating that, “The intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited.”

The passage of this bill marks a significant development in the ongoing debate over geoengineering and environmental manipulation. Proponents of the bill believe that it is a necessary step to safeguard the environment and public health from unregulated geoengineering practices.

The legislation is set to be enforced beginning July 1, 2024, indicating the urgency that the Tennessee Senate places on this issue for the “public welfare.”

Attention now turns to the House, where the bill is scheduled to be reviewed by the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday.

If the House passes the bill, Tennessee would become one of the first states to establish a legal framework explicitly prohibiting the spraying of chemicals for geoengineering purposes, potentially setting a precedent for other states to follow in addressing concerns around environmental and atmospheric manipulation.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a company called Make Sunsets has successfully launched weather balloons from Mexico that may have released sulfur particles into the atmosphere. Luke Iseman, the co-founder and CEO, claims that because climate change presents such an imminent threat, bizarre interventions like theirs are necessary:

“It’s morally wrong, in my opinion, for us not to be doing this,” said Iseman. “What’s important is to do this as quickly and safely as we can.”

Disturbingly, Make Sunsets made this attempt at solar geoengineering without informing the public or even attempting to engage scientists. Experts who spoke to MIT Technology Review uniformly condemned the move.

Despite these potential unintended consequences and repercussions to the scientific field, Make Sunsets is determined to cash in. They are already selling $10 “cooling credits” for releasing just one gram of carbon into the stratosphere. But don’t worry, Iseman says, the company will act as responsibly as possible:

“What I want to do is create as much cooling as quickly as I responsibly can, over the rest of my life, frankly,” said Iseman. He added later that they will deploy as much sulfur in 2023 as “we can get customers to pay us” for.”

TGP also reported that scientists have proposed an audacious novel geoengineering technique: intentionally dehydrating the stratosphere.

A study published in Science Advances involves the ambitious and contentious idea of seeding the upper atmosphere with particles to prevent water vapor from entering the stratosphere.

Water vapor is important because it’s the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth. The greenhouse effect occurs when gases in the atmosphere trap heat from the sun, keeping the planet livable. Water vapor is made up of complex molecules that absorb heat radiated from the Earth’s surface and re-radiate it back to the planet.

Also, George Soros wants humans to take control of Earth’s atmosphere to halt “climate change.”

This idea could create a global calamity resulting in the deaths of millions of humans and animals.

According to Fox News, Soros spoke to the Munich Security Conference in 2023 and boasted that he had discovered a process where white clouds are created to reflect sunlight away from warming areas to prevent ice sheets from melting. Ice sheets melting in Greenland in particular, he claimed, could doom human civilization.

The “plan” Soros and King are advocating for is called solar geoengineering. This idea will not save civilization but does have the potential to destroy it.

Klaus Schwab and his band of globalists are also toying with the idea of turning off the sun.

In a new dystopian video that was released by the WEF this month, the organization touted the use of futuristic “space bubbles” that could be used to effectively block out the sun, and thus, help reduce climate change. The “geoengineering” project would theoretically reflect a portion of solar radiation back into space in order to cool the planet, the video explains while highlighting a recent study about the project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Source: Vigilantnews.com

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Wind farm operators face an investigation into claims that they overcharged by £100million last year alone when asked to switch off turbines to cut excess power to the grid.

The cost – which is likely to have been added to consumer bills – has been highlighted by the Renewable Energy Foundation and is now under investigation by industry regulator Ofgem.

Wind farm operators are accused of ‘inflating’ the prices they charge, with the cost ultimately passed on to the consumer.

REF director John Constable said: ‘Our evidence suggests that multiple wind farm operators have been charging over the odds to reduce their output on windy days, generating no energy but costing consumers a fortune.’

National Grid’s system operating wing (ESO) pays energy generators to increase or decrease supply in real time to balance it with demand.

These costs are then ultimately footed by the consumer through bills.

REF said that the income wind farm operators are meant to take is based on the prices set for their electricity output and the volume of electricity that the wind farm predicts would have been generated during the time it is turned off.

In a statement the REF said it ‘estimates that elevated prices charged for constraints cost the consumer in excess of £100 million in 2023 alone.’

It added: ‘The complex and opaque UK subsidy regime obscures the impact of constraint bid prices on the costs to the consumer, but Ofgem has the authority to check this behaviour and apply retrospective fines to recover these excess profits if it determines that there has been an abuse of market power.’

An Ofgem spokesman said: ‘Ofgem works with the Electricity System Operator (ESO) to look into alleged improper behaviour of wind farms and other generators.

‘We’ll consider all the facts and if evidence of a breach of market rules is found we will not hesitate to act. We are also currently consulting on whether any changes are required to the licensing rules in this area.’

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The electric transmission grid is the limiting factor for economic development in many communities across America. Energy communities looking to build generation and export power are discovering that the cost of grid upgrades stops that development. New manufacturing facilities face the same delays, costing jobs.

Since my time at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, leaders have been working on solutions to ensure that the American transmission grid supports a growing and competitive economy, at a fair cost to customers. But these changes aren’t coming fast enough, and supply chains for transmission equipment are getting tighter in a global race for the future of energy.

Poles and wires aren’t the only way to add transmission capacity. Grid Enhancing Technologies, or GETs, are sensors, controls and software that maximize the value of the existing grid. They usually find 20%-40% more capacity, which would return billions of dollars in benefits to consumers every year. Separate studies by leading engineering firms Quanta Technologies and the Brattle Group found that using GETs in generator interconnection could reduce wholesale energy costs nationwide by over $5 billion per year. GETs can also reduce grid congestion — when transmission infrastructure limits the delivery of lowest-cost power — which came to over $20 billion in 2022. GETs could have saved $2 billion-$8 billion in grid congestion every year for the past decade. GETs also mitigate the impacts of grid outages and find or create system flexibility that improves reliability.

These tools are more widely adopted outside the U.S. Countries that have modified the traditional cost-of-service business model to reflect changing grid needs are reaping the rewards. Domestically, low-cost operational technologies are not part of the utility business model — they are only compensated for building new infrastructure (known as “capital expenditures.”)

The U.K. now combines operational and capital spending by the utility and has performance incentives for cost-saving solutions. The incentives work: the U.K. has groundbreaking deployments of two types of GETs: Advanced Power Flow Control and Dynamic Line Ratings.

Belgium started deploying Dynamic Line Ratings, or DLR, in 2008. Their technology measures the real-time capacity of transmission lines, which are otherwise used far below their potential. DLR has allowed massive expansion of Belgian wind generation by unlocking grid capacity, saving 500,000 euros in a single day by increasing line capacity to deliver low-cost power.

The clock is ticking. The U.S. is 16 years behind Belgium and FERC has had explicit direction from Congress to address this since the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The commission is directed to create incentives to “encourage deployment of transmission technologies and other measures to increase the capacity and efficiency of existing transmission facilities and improve the operation of the facilities.”

While I chaired the FERC, we held the first workshop on Grid Enhancing Technologies in 2019, followed by a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in 2020 that included proposed incentives for transmission technologies. My colleagues continued with a workshop on a shared savings incentive model for GETs, similar to the U.K. policy but more limited in scale. This month, Senators Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Angus King, I-Maine, and Representatives Kathy Castor, D-Fla., Paul Tonko, D-N.Y. and Scott Peters, D-Calif., introduced the Advancing GETs Act, which would require FERC to move forward with the proposal to allow utilities to propose GETs projects with significant consumer benefits and be compensated for unlocking value quickly and at very low cost.

But incentives aren’t FERC’s only tool for transmission grid modernization.

In January, the largest electricity market in the United States, the PJM Interconnection, reaffirmed a proposal it shared two years ago with FERC — that regions could require deployment of Dynamic Line Ratings on power lines that create over $2 million in congestion costs every year. PPL Electric Utilities added their own comments, noting that the DLR systems have performed without interruption for two years, saving tens of millions in congestion costs and supporting reliability in extreme weather.

Incentives and requirements are both essential tools to change utility practices. The PJM threshold would put Dynamic Line Ratings on the lines where they will undoubtedly pay for themselves. The shared savings incentive could encourage utilities to find high-value applications — potentially by combining multiple GETs.

FERC’s proposed transmission planning rule requires regional plans to study Dynamic Line Ratings and Advanced Power Flow Control. This would be a leap forward for America’s grid, but FERC can’t stop there. Further, specific requirements will be needed, and incentive reform will drive utilities toward an optimized transmission grid. As more generation and storage plug in at the distribution level, we’ll also have to apply these tools on the lower voltage grid. This is another reason utilities must put GETs in their toolboxes today.

Source: Utilitydive.com

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HOUSTON, Texas — Australia’s Woodside Energy Group plans to significantly step up liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchases from North America, as rising costs and other issues make procurement in its home market more challenging.

The company currently procures LNG from a project in Texas, and plans to start buying from Louisiana in around 2028 and Mexico’s west coast in around 2029. It expects to source 4.7 million tonnes of LNG annually from North America at that point, five times current levels and equivalent to almost half the capacity of the production rights it holds in Australia.

“We are interested in North American LNG. We do continue to look at opportunities in the U.S.,” Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill told Nikkei in an interview.

“We have taken steps to increase our trading portfolio,” not just production, she said.

Woodside plans to resell the 1.3 million tonnes of LNG it will receive annually from the Mexico project in Asia. This will allow it to supply energy-hungry East Asian markets without passing through the Panama Canal, which is prone to congestion.

The company is seeking opportunities in western Canada as well. “To produce LNG in the west coast of Canada, that’s about as close as you can get to Japan,” O’Neill said.

The U.S. became the world’s top LNG exporter last year, after rapid growth powered by the shale revolution of the late 2000s enabled the country to pump out cheap gas in huge quantities. European oil companies and commodity trading houses have also been buying more American LNG.

Woodside is shifting more toward North America in light of the difficulty of further expansion in Australia, where the cost of building plants has soared and existing gas fields are running dry. Tighter environmental regulations are also making it more difficult for Woodside to ramp up output in its home market as it has in the past.

Australia was the world’s top LNG exporter between 2019 and 2022, but its exports have peaked, according to research firm Rystad Energy.

The U.S. may end up posing its own challenges. President Joe Biden’s administration in January announced a freeze on approvals for new LNG exports to reassess their climate impact.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm indicated last week that the pause is expected to end within a year, but O’Neill noted that “uncertainty remains.”

“Whenever the government says ‘we’re calling timeout,’ it’s fully in their control to call time back in,” she said. “And they might go back to as it was, [or] they might put new rules in place.”

Some in the LNG industry speculate that applicants may be required to take measures to prevent methane leaks or install systems to capture carbon dioxide emissions. A big increase in costs could dampen energy companies’ appetite for investment.

“The U.S. has been extremely fortunate to have a tremendous amount of accessible natural gas” that could be used not only “to fuel domestic industry but also exported to support Europe, to support Asian countries, not just in meeting baseline energy needs but helping with decarbonization,” O’Neill said.

“If the world is serious about tackling climate change, we need to be serious about displacing the coal fired power generation that’s currently in use,” she said. “Natural gas has half the life cycle emissions intensity.”

The LNG industry is undergoing a sea change amid the growing global push for decarbonization, and a realignment may be on the cards as companies compete for supply. Woodside had been in talks with compatriot Santos on a merger that would have created one of the world’s biggest LNG players, but said last month that the negotiations had been scrapped.

Source: Asia.nikkei.com

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Daily Standup Top Stories

Oil Demand Outpaces Expectations, Testing Calculus on Peak Crude

Don’t let California politicians gaslight you. Higher gas prices are driven by deliberate policy choices.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

01:36 – Oil Demand Outpaces Expectations, Testing Calculus on Peak Crude

04:44 – Don’t let California politicians gaslight you. Higher gas prices are driven by deliberate policy choices.

07:18 – Exxon Mobil Ahead of Schedule in Doubling LNG Portfolio, Executive Says

10:41 – PetroChina Books Record Profit as Natural Gas and Fuel Demand Soar

13:58 – Oil settles higher as Russia orders output cuts, geopolitical tensions persist

16:26 – Shell sells interest in U.S. offshore wind joint venture as company refocuses on oil and gas

18:42 – 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, March 26th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up. Here are today’s top headlines. First up oil demand outpaces expectations. Testing calculus on peak crude oil. Great. I’m back in. I’m back in college now. We’re doing calculus to kill me. Next up, our favorite state. Don’t let California politicians gaslight you. Higher gas prices are driven by deliberate policy choices. A nice little op ed out of the, out of the state of California. Next up, Exxon Mobil, ahead of schedule in doubling its LNG portfolio, according to executives. We’ll finalize the news segment with Petro China booking record profits as natural gas and fuel demand absolutely soar. Stool. Then toss it over to me. I will quickly cover what’s going on in the oil and gas markets and touch on Shell’s and touch on Shell’s selling its interest in U.S offshore wind joint venture as company refocuses on oil and gas. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. We’ll cover all of that in a bag of chips, guys. As always, I’m Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley, the, editor and purveyor of energy news beat.com. Where do you want to begin? [00:01:35][80.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:36] Hey, let’s get rolling over here at Peak oil. Oil demand outpaces expectation testing calculus on peak crude. You know we keep doing peak crude. And everybody’s saying, have we reached peak crude in the Permian. And I think we’re not even close. Here’s what you know, we talked about this last week a little bit. Amir Nassir is CEO of Saudi Aramco. We should abandon this fantasy of phasing out oil and gas. This is one we didn’t talk about. Was Russell Hardy, the CEO of v toll, the global oil trader? He had said the same kind of thing. Peak oil and consumption to oil 2030s because of downgraded expectations and the adoption of electric vehicles. Michael, this is just an absolute trend. And then there’s also, oil governor, governor Group expects an increase of 1.4 million barrels per day this year. To refer to figure to figure. Would you you like, says the consensus is, expectation about 1.5 million in demand, but argues there’s considerable upside to risks. What are your thoughts on demand? [00:03:02][85.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:03] Well, I mean, it’s clear that we’re probably going to see demand slightly higher than supply. I think that’s the current sentiment right now, considering where oil prices are. You’ve got all of these different, you know, oil traders, Trafigura, Gunvor, they’re all in the same in, down the same gun barrel is that, you know, really the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas? Is it coming? And we need to make sure that we have enough demand. I see, you know, demand somewhere in that 1.3 to 1.5 million range. That’s not going to shock anybody. I’m always going to be a little bit higher than what the IEA says. I mean, they still the IEA in their defense still has demand rising by 1.3 million barrels a day, which was clearly less than, last year’s 2.2 million. Right. Where’s that extra growth going to come from this year? You know, we talked a lot last week about AI and some of that stuff. So I don’t know how much crude oil demand you’re going to see from the increase today. You’re going to see probably a lot more than that gas and LNG demand. But there is something to be said about where is that energy going to come from? You know, I think all eyes are going to be on India as they continue to grow, grow, grow, buy cheap Russian oil, continue to, to increase. I think, you know, you know, Helen Curry, she’s the chief economist over ConocoPhillips pointed out, you know, really what you need to do is look at where the emerging market growth is going to come from. It’s probably going to be India. The other thing is, what are EVs going to do depending on that route. So I think there’s a lot of different stuff. I’m going to take the over on the IEA number though. Trust me, I. [00:04:35][92.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:36] Loved her comment there. Her quote we’re looking for another record high in world demand. I like your comment. All right. Let’s roll to the next one here. Let’s go to our favorite third world country, California. Don’t let California politicians gaslight you. Higher gas prices are driven by deliberate policy choices. There’s some couple good things in here, and I want to just give a shout out. This came from the OC Register. So, I mean, this is not some kind. Yeah. Publication. That’s just kind of going out there a little bit. Right wing type thing. So, the bottom line is that California’s policy changes are driving the high cost at the pump, and they’re continuing to do so. It might be easier to play the blame game with the facts or the facts. The state of California makes a lot of money off of a gallon of gas, more than the oil companies do. So, you know, you sit back and take a look. There’s there’s taxes on the EMV, there’s taxes on it being imported in. There’s taxes when it’s being drilled out of the rainforest. And guess who gets it in the drives through my home. It’s just unbelievable. [00:05:55][79.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:56] The consumer gets it through. You know it’s it’s it’s. [00:05:59][3.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:00] It’s a. [00:06:00][0.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:01] La times would gaslight their own readers. I would have never guessed that. [00:06:04][3.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:05] And and this one is just amazing. $1.83 a gallon in taxes. [00:06:11][6.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:13] That’s almost that’s almost what we were paying in Covid here in Texas. [00:06:17][3.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:19] Trump was $1.80 something that I just did a thing on it. And I took another picture, over the weekend, and it was in, Bruce Willis, death, or, what was the one where he was in, Nagasaki Tower. There was a picture of gasoline at $0.74. Die hard, the first Die Hard seven. Oh, yeah. [00:06:47][28.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:48] Since I was like, what are we talking about here? But yes, we lost. Oh. [00:06:53][5.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:53] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Here it is. Carb expects cost could increase another $0.47. So it’s almost going to even go up from Die Hard. [00:07:02][8.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:02] It was going to be $2. I do love, the O.C. Register. They’re they’re one of the few papers down in, southern California county that will actually read. Oh, yeah. It’s redneck part of California. Don’t don’t get me wrong. What’s next? [00:07:17][14.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:18] Hey, let’s go to our buddies over there to Exxon Mobil ahead of schedule and doubling LNG portfolio. Holy smokes. Not only is oil and gas not at peak, LNG is really taking off here. Exxon is revamping its LNG strategy amid growing production of the fuel as a wider corporate reorganization that began in 2022. Michael, I do want to share with you that in the news feeds that I get, you know, I get about two hours worth of reading in every day. You know, the number of bunkering LNG ships is going through the roof. Disney has just taken another cruise. Ship you. I would never want to go on a, cruise period. But no, you know, you can’t go on one because people would think that you’re Mickey is as they walk up and go, Mickey. So yeah, that was supposed to be funny, by the way. Yeah. You’re a great Mickey Mouse. It was. [00:08:23][65.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:23] Okay. It was okay. [00:08:24][0.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:25] So but LNG is becoming a fuel of choice and it meets the stringent, shipping. And there’s more shipping container coming around. Bunker is the infrastructure’s there. This is pretty cool. Here’s a quote. Our portfolio is never going to look like shells. It’s not going to look like totals. We’re targeting different aspects of the value chain, he told Reuters. [00:08:54][28.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:55] Well who and what does that specifically mean? It’s they’re going to be trading their own LNG, not necessarily other people’s LNG, as an intermediary and getting into the vital game in the Trafigura game, the gun ball game, they’re going to say, we’ve got enough LNG capacity ourselves to go ahead and pump it all through. So that’s the little bit of a difference that they’re going to have. I think they they could have a larger trading portfolio. But that Paul Clark I think is his name. Is it Paul? Peter Clark, Exxon senior vice president for global LNG, was basically saying that the margin in that business are basically small relative to what it can make of selling its own natural gas, which I think is actually interesting thing. You know, there’s more value in producing, liquefying and selling it, where those long term contracts still account for about 80% of the global trade. I love this quote, Stuart. He goes, the biggest component in the LNG space is obviously the commercialization of LNG yourself. It’s like what Elon said, anyone could build one rocket to go to Mars one time. It’s how do you manufacture thousands of those to keep going? And it’s in the manufacturing or the commercialization. Of an industry which allows you to scale from zero to. Large amounts. [00:10:14][79.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:15] I love to quote down in here from Clark and he spells his name Clark. The market is expanding and by 2050, 75% of global energy demand will be in Asia Pacific. So we are really focused in that area. I applaud them on their market strategies as well as long term growth. [00:10:38][23.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:39] Yeah, absolutely. What’s next? [00:10:40][1.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:41] Okay. Let’s go to our buddies over there at Petro China books. President XI new redundancy record profit as natural gas and fuel demand soar. You know, I think you can recognize this red net. Total revenues for Petro China slumped by 7% in 2023. And they’re up this year. The volumes processed by a crude jumped 15.3% year over year. Jet fuel soared by 77%. Production rose 14.4 and diesel output 8.9. Michael, here’s where I talked about this a few about a month ago. And that is that the, downstream capabilities of, China are, increasing downstream is increasing. And, Californian chatter heads are looking to import from China refined goods. [00:11:51][70.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:52] Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s it’s pretty crazy. I mean, everybody wants to go get their, their oil and gas from somewhere other than the United States. You know, I mean, this just goes to show that, you know, China’s going to continue, to dominate the market from a buying perspective. You know, they’re the the, the world’s top importer. You know, it is interesting to know that that the total revenues did slumped by 7%. But that’s mainly due to international oil and gas prices, which affects their upstream unit volumes up. We also saw the same thing happened with with the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company, which saw its net profit in 2023, slipped by 12.5% again due to those international prices. So, I mean, they’re going to be taking a long over there, but as long as they keep buying, it’s it’s not really going to matter now. [00:12:39][46.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:40] They’re still buying everything they possibly can. Now what do you think that Russia’s, the Ukraine attack in Russia on their refined products, is going to do because that drove oil up, if I remember right, today, there was some things going on. [00:12:59][19.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:00] Well, yeah. No, we we did see oil prices, Bob. We’ll go ahead and and roll over to finance then. But before we do that we’ll quickly pay the bills here. Guys. As always, the news and analysis you just heard, brought to you by the world’s greatest website, www.energynewsbeat.com. The best place for all your energy and oil and gas news doing the team do a tremendous job keeping that website up to speed. Everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy business. Check out dashboard.EnergyNewsBeat.com The best place for all your data and energy news. Com we’ll go ahead and hit the description below. Links to the articles, all of the different timestamps so you can jump back here. Hear what we just talked about ExxonMobil. Or jump ahead and hear what’s going on with shell and the wind business. Or just go ahead and skip the end of the show because you like your honest sign off. Whatever floats your boat. Again, as always, guys, check us out. Energynewsbeat.com. [00:13:54][53.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:56] Go ahead and moving over to the finance section guys. Oil closing settles higher mainly off Russia ordering output cuts and geopolitical tensions persisting. We saw US markets from an S&P 500 standpoint down three quarters. down 3/10 of a percentage point. Nasdaq also down about 3/10 of a percentage point. Big news today is Boeing CEO and entire management team just absolutely gets waxed. And so they’ll. [00:14:21][25.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:21] as well they should. [00:14:22][0.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:23] As well. They should. I’m not you know I’m flying Airbus as much as I can. We also saw ten year year, or two year and ten year yield stay fairly flat, about 0.04 percentage points and 0.05 percentage points. We saw Bitcoin up four percentage points. As I mentioned, crude oil on the WTI side actually up about 1.64 percentage points 8195. Brant oil actually stays fairly flat 8687 again mainly due to the fact that that Russia ordering those output cuts really ironically only affects the WTI price relative to Brant, which is absolutely, hilarious. So more of a regression to mean to give you guys an idea. Brant up about 11% this year, WTI up about 12.5 percentage points a little bit of. A spread trade there. Moscow came out today and ordered companies to reduce oil output in the second quarter to meet production targets of 9 million barrels per day by the end of June, in line with its pledges, via OPEC plus Hill Flynn out of rice futures group. Russia’s committed to the OPEC cut. They’re looking beyond the current supply demand fundamentals and looking for unity with OPEC. Plus you know we saw some crazy stuff happening in in Russia over the weekend. in terms of of the attacks they had locally. So it’s going to be interesting to see from a geopolitical standpoint how they respond that we have seen some more Russian oil refineries have some of their capacity knocked offline due to continued drone strikes over the weekend. You know, they’ve got about I mean, you know, this is out a Reuters to about 7% of their total refining capacity has been cut off line. So you know we’re we’re dancing on a razor’s edge here. You know, we also are hoping to adopt a resolution demanding the cease fire, there in Palestine with Israel and Hamas. Who knows where that goes? You know, the oil prices are sort of teetering on that, but, you know, good strength. Early on this Monday, we love to see a good $81 in. And and nobody’s going to complain about that. Especially shell great day to announce that they go ahead and sell their interest in U.S offshore wind joint venture as company refocuses on oil and gas. To give you guys an idea shell New Energies ventures, which is, you know, is a subsidiary, Shell New Energies USA, LLC. They’ve sold their 50% equity share in the South Coast wind energy project to the joint venture partner that they had, Ocean Wind North America. And this was ironically, this is one of those Nimby stew not in my backyard. They’re trying to build this power player. They’re trying to build this proposed offshore wind farm in the US federal, waters, about 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 33 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Apparently, they’re going to have a, the goal was to have a capacity of about 20 400MW, covering around, 127,000 acres, which, I mean, is Guy, when you just think about that, guys, the amount of energy you can you the amount of oil that can produce 20 400MW does not take up 12, 120,000 acres specifically sitting offshore. So it’s it’s pretty unbelievable. [00:17:37][193.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:39] And then carbon does not ever make it to net zero. By the time these things fail out on mean time between failure doesn’t happen. [00:17:52][13.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:54] Yeah, absolutely. Well, I also think that, I was going to say I, I also think that, you know, it’s good for the bird population. They’re trying to keep the bird population down out there. So, we. Absolutely. [00:18:06][12.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:07] And I know you don’t mind killing the whales, but I do. Glenn Wright, senior vice president of Shell Energy, says we’re grateful to Ocean Winds for their years of partnership with this venture and continue to seek opportunities for more energy with fewer emissions. [00:18:22][15.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:25] It’s absolutely unbelievable. As the door. [00:18:28][3.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:29] Closes. [00:18:29][0.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:30] There’s the door closes. Hey, shell taking it seriously, their CEO said we’re shifting back to oil and gas. Here’s another, you know, believe him when he says it. Trust me. [00:18:38][7.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:38] Oh, yeah. They gotta make money somehow. [00:18:40][1.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:41] Absolutely. What else you need? [00:18:43][1.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:43] Well, I tell you, I our hearts go out for the folks in affected and in Russia. I’m, nobody should be putting up with terrorism. Nobody. And it’s just the, Russian people that are hit by. I believe ISIS has been claiming it. Now. Terrorism sucks in all forms. [00:19:04][20.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:05] Consumer always takes it in the shorts, whether it’s here in the U.S, whether it’s in Russia, whether it’s abroad, you know, and we stand with the people. Yeah. So with that guys, we’ll let you get out of here, get back to work, start your Tuesday. Appreciate everybody checking us out. World’s greatest, energy news website, energy news beat.com. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:19:05][0.0][1097.6]

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The post Daily Energy Standup Episode #337 – Oil Demand Surpasses Expectations, California Gas Prices, Exxon’s LNG Expansion, PetroChina’s Record Profits, and Shell’s Strategic Shift first appeared on Energy News Beat.

The post Daily Energy Standup Episode #337 – Oil Demand Surpasses Expectations, California Gas Prices, Exxon’s LNG Expansion, PetroChina’s Record Profits, and Shell’s Strategic Shift appeared first on Energy News Beat.