Energy News Beat

Peru LNG, the operator of the 4.4 mtpa LNG plant at Pampa Melchorita, has increased its exports last year compared to the year before, and it also expects to boost the number of shipments in 2024.

US-based Hunt Oil holds a 50 percent operating stake in the Pampa Melchorita LNG plant, while SK and Marubeni have 20 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

LNG giant Shell also holds a 20 percent stake and takes all the volumes produced at the facility.

“In 2023, 55 vessels were loaded, totaling 3,692,637 metric tons,” Peru LNG told LNG Prime in emailed comments.

This compares to 51 vessels, totaling 3,474,259 metric tons, in 2022, it said.

Data by state-owned PeruPetro shows that the LNG plant shipped six cargoes in December to Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Canada, and UK.

Peru LNG shipped four LNG cargoes in November, four cargoes in October, and five cargoes in September.

The plant sent two cargoes in August after it completed scheduled maintenance, operator Hunt Oil previously told LNG Prime.

Peru LNG said that the main destinations in 2023 were United Kingdom and South Korea, and also Japan, China, Spain, France, Netherlands, and Canada.

“Regarding 2024, 60 vessels and 218 Tbtus are expected to be loaded,” Peru LNG said.

According to Peru LNG’s 2022 annual report, the plant loaded more than 60 vessels only in 2016 and in 2017.

In 2021, 38 vessels berthed to load LNG at the plant, 55 vessels in 2020, 58 vessels in 2019, 57 vessels in 2018, 64 vessels in 2017, 70 vessels in 2016, 56 vessels in 2015, 60 vessels in 2014, 57 vessels in 2013, 53 vessels in 2012, 55 vessels in 2011, and 23 vessels in 2011 when operations began.

 

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Energy News Beat

A US-China clash over the self-ruled island would cost the world some $10trn, the business news outlet estimates

 

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Daily Standup Top Stories

Standard Chartered: Oil Demand Growth To Remain Robust In 2024 And 2025

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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 Energy Newsbeat podcast January 8th, 2024. Here are our top headlines for the day. Starting off Standard Chartered Oil demand growth to remain robust in 2024 and 2025. Next up, 75 U.S. lawmakers now support Cbdc and tight surveillance bill. Interesting one there. Next up Gavin Newsom’s ten favorite myths about energy and climate. Refuted though. Um great article. Next up takeover talks trigger rally at beleaguered BP. Spicy one year. Finally Brics expands footprint in the global South. I will then quickly cover what’s going on in the oil and gas finance segments. Markets up high, but oil does fall about three percentage points, mainly off the back of Saudi cutting its official selling price. Um, and then all of that, we will send you out of here to get your day started. I’m Michael Tanner, joined as always, by the executive producer of the show that prepared the show. I’m the director and publisher of the world’s greatest website. Energy. Newsbeat.com Stuart Hurley. How are you doing today? [00:01:22][67.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:23] It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. And for our podcast listeners, you and I should have called ahead because we both got blue shirts on today. [00:01:29][6.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:30] We do. Hopefully. That’s, uh. Hopefully that’s a sign of good things to come, but let’s go ahead and kick this off. Stu, where do you want to begin? [00:01:35][5.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:36] Hey, let’s start with our buddies over there at Standard Charter. Uh, I thought this was pretty funny. Michael, there’s only three real quick bullet points here. Standard chartered has predicted the oil demand growth in the current year will clock in at a robust 1.5 million barrels per day in a 1.41 in 2021. That’s demand growth. Uh, the analysts have predicted that the global monthly demand will move above the 104 million barrels per day for the first time in August 2024, eclipsing 105 in August 2025. I’ll tell you what. Um, for all the, um, folks that were saying, was it the over at the IEA? Oil’s dead. Ding dong. The wicked witch is dead. Um, and then all these people got data. What’s up with data? [00:02:28][52.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:29] Well, I think I think it’s because as as as energy becomes cheaper, more people are going to want use it. So there’s this there’s this interesting combination that if if energy was free, we’d use as much as possible. As prices go down, we will begin to use more. You know, specifically on the oil side, we’re going to use more oil. It’s part of the reasons why these cuts that we’re seeing from Saudi Arabia, they’re meant to bring prices up because the less oil on the market price goes up. So it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, you make energy cheaper. People will consume more of this. Now they’re coming out on a limb here and really on a limb in terms of public sentiment. If, you know, obviously the IEA and the IEA are in sort of limbo. They think there’s going to be short term demand growth. Remember the the IEA came out and said we’re going to see probably record production in 2024, but it’s then going to peak at somewhere around 2025, 2026 and then go on down. Obviously, Standard Chartered is not necessarily saying that they’re seeing huge demand growth in 2024. Slightly less, but still more demand growth in 2025. And you can only imagine that these, you know, um, and then they also say, you know, that the oil demand growth post will remain in the longer term averages, which means we’re going to see growth where we’re going to see less growth. What does that mean? We’re growing but at a slower rate. The acceleration of growth is slowing down. So um, I love this article from Standard Chartered. We love their analysis. You know, they also have come out you know, obviously they’re fairly bullish. They do expect China to lead those projected demand growth. With China. Expect to see an uptick in demand to the tune of about 500,000 barrels per day in 2024 and about 375,020 25, while while India clocks in second, with their growth expected to be somewhere around 329,000 in 2024 and 373,000 in 2025. So they actually see India as the larger growth opportunity. But yet China still with the largest gross, um, uptick in demand growth. So very interesting. We love this report. What’s next. [00:04:37][128.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:38] Let’s go to 75 U.S. lawmakers now support CBC anti surveillance bill Michael CBC is not something you smoke. It’s actually central bank digital currency which I am way against. I just thought I’d let you know okay. And here’s my prediction on this article. And for Bitcoin I think you’re going to see cryptocurrencies specifically Bitcoin go big people uh are afraid of central. Bank currencies and I couldn’t applaud more. Anybody mining for Bitcoin. Home run. So let’s go to this. The bill specifically the bill prohibits the Federal Reserve and the Federal Open Market Committee from using any central bank digital currency to implement monetary policy. Michael, when they did the mechanisms already in place, the, uh, they’ve already built it. It’s already there. They’re waiting for a crisis to put it in place. Once they do that, I read another article over the weekend. And, Michael, are you ready for this? If you don’t, uh, if you post anything on social media and you have an electric charging, they can shut your charging down with this. They don’t want you driving out of town so your credit cards won’t work past 15 miles. So this is something that is horrific about control. [00:06:08][89.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:09] Yes, central bank digital currencies give me the heebie jeebies. You know, it’s really a way to implement mass amounts of really just, you know, countrywide censorship. You know, you’ve you you’ve purchased too much meat. You’ve done this. You’ve done that. Now we can just cut off your access to literally the markets. I mean, you know, I mean, we talk about what Swift did by reshaping the way the Russian economy has to operate when they don’t have access to all of these banks. I’m not saying that I agree or disagree necessarily with that decision, but it can become a very nightmare for people when when you get cut off from the banking system. It’s exactly what I think a central bank digital currency is designed to do. It’s designed to give the the fed more power. So I applaud the 75, um, Congress, uh, men and women for, uh, taking on this. [00:06:57][47.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:57] Absolutely. And there was a bunch of folks running around saying, oh, uh, Biden was going to announce, uh, that he was going to recall the dollar. Uh, and I don’t have any idea if that was true or not. But boy, now that you see that the thing’s been implemented, that’s the first step that they do. Okay, let’s go to Gavin Newsom. Ten favorite myths about energy climate. And, uh, it is refuted. And, uh, you know, you and I have talked on the podcast about our buddy, uh, Gavin Newsom. Yep. Uh, if he dives into the, uh, ocean there, they’re going to blame it on Exxon for an oil spill. He’s got so much oil in his hair, I guarantee you, you know, penguins would be dying. [00:07:41][43.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:41] Yeah. It’s the most prolific oil field in California. Is Gavin Newsom his hairpiece? [00:07:45][3.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:46] Oh, yeah. They just kind of go do, uh, get it out of his due. Ray, I love me a new rig out there. I always wore one when the kids were funny. Okay. Myth number one, uh, Newsom’s energy policy drives progress. Ooh. Uh, I don’t think that I’m going to vote on that. All of our listeners that listen to the podcast, if you have any others, it should be added this list car myth number two, supporters of fossil fuel are climate change deniers and, uh, climate changes. It’s called seasons. Okay. [00:08:21][35.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:22] Uh, um, and remember I say this. I’ve said this briefly. I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to remember when it was global warming and they did the sleight of hand to climate change. [00:08:32][10.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:33] It’s the shell game. My God, I talked about it this morning on the on the energy, uh, realities. Now that instead of that. And it’s the shell game with no PE and all you’re doing is move it around. Okay, so let’s go to the next myth. Number three, 97% of climate scientists agree that we face a climate crisis that requires the rapid elimination of fossil fuels. Uh, yeah. Go home. Uh, no, that that is not true. In fact, uh, we love our, uh, interview with Patrick. Uh, more he’s now. I mean, that is one sharp cat founder of, uh, Greenpeace. That’s number four. California is a climate leader. Um, and, um, I know that, in fact, they are a leader in the highest prices of energy to the consumers and the greatest, highest prices for U-Haul trucks leaving California. I’m not kidding. Okay, let’s go here. Myth number five, the U.S. should lead cop 28 and committing to net zero by 2050. [00:09:41][68.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:42] Um, I love what it says. Truth net zero by 2050 is a death sentence to any economy that adopts it. China won’t be developing world. The discipline needs fossil fuels. U.S. should be leading the way in energy freedom, which I like. [00:09:56][13.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:56] And oh yeah, look at the myth number six. There is a graphic. If we could have our producer pull this graphic in installed electric Pasadena in California solar and wind in 2013. There’s the yellow bar. That’s about, what, ten? Percent, uh, estimated there. Then you have 2022. Solar and wind goes to probably 65, but the reliable capacity drops down. And I wonder how much money that was. Let’s go to myth. Just a few. [00:10:26][29.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:26] Trillions. No worries. [00:10:27][0.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:27] Billion. What’s a few trillion between friends? Uh, California’s grid is the model for the US. Look at that graph chart. Uh, well, Miss Producer, if you could pull this in residential electricity prices, it is going up at a dramatic price. Uh, California is myth number eight. Solving solar and winds with batteries. One day of world energy. Uh, 460,000,000MW. 1 trillion in Tesla Mega packs 190 trillion. Next. I’m not even gonna argue that one. Myth number nine. Uh, ice ban is a model for the US. [00:11:08][40.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:11] We got to get the picture up here. August 25th, 2023 CIA announces gasoline car ban. Seven days later, California tells citizens not to charge their EVs. [00:11:22][10.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:23] Oops. Um, and and then there was another California man. Uh, two months ago, he ordered a Tesla. I want me a Tesla Cybertruck. It’s bulletproof. I need one. Just, you know, our fans love me, but not that much. And so when I. What I want to do is, uh, when you sit back and take a look, this man ordered a EV. He then, uh, the electric company told him that he had to have another complete 100 Meg circuit come into his house, and then he wanted to add another, uh, something else, EV. And they said, oh, you gotta to have a third. But yet we don’t have any available, so you can’t even get an EV to charge at home. So California cannot add enough power. I thought that was pretty cool. So let’s go on to myth number ten. Kas anti oil efforts are a model for the US. Look at this graphic. These oil companies are ripping us off. They think that the oil companies are actually ripping them off when it’s actually, uh, how they’re doing all their policies. [00:12:25][62.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:26] I don’t know who wrote, um, Gavin Newsom’s energy policy, but. [00:12:29][2.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:29] Uh, he was definitely some, um, um, I our guy of the week. They got fired. So, um. [00:12:36][6.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:36] Former I, our guy of the week. All right, what’s next? I love this next one. [00:12:39][3.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:40] Oh, and have fun. Takeover talks, triggers rally at beleaguered BP. My uncle, you can’t buy this kind of entertainment. I picked this one out just for you. I knew this would make your day. Uh, BP has a market cap of more than, uh, 80 billion, uh, pounds, which would probably make, uh, any offer one of the biggest in the world. 80 billion pounds. I thought this was pretty good. Brant Crosetti, word is that absence of a permanent chief executive, a less inhibited balance sheet and lowly valuation may also catch the eye. This is between BP and shell. [00:13:17][37.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:18] Yeah. I mean, so I guess what’s what’s the rumor here? The rumor came out a little earlier this week and, and into the week in that BP could possibly set itself up to merge with somebody that did the two mega-cap companies that came out as its possible suitors. You know, obviously the first one is shell them both being kind of European style, uh, companies. Um, would that be a good merger? Chevron, while they also just bought has could also emerge as a, you know, a possible suitor. I think the interesting part is this is this is obviously going to take some time with a market capitalization of, you said more than 80 billion. It would make this by far the largest basically takeover in the oil and gas business in a hot minute, specifically in 2024 and 2023. Right. You have to remember, last year, at the end of last year, CEO Bernard Looney, CEO of the holding company, and then also CEO David Lawlor, both left over in mysterious circumstances. You know, I don’t want to I don’t want, you know, rumor mill on why BP’s CEO Doug Lawler left out. I’m going to leave that up to the rumor mill. I’ve heard some things, but I don’t want to say anything specific. We do know that, uh, Bernard Looney had had some good times with his former employees, uh, with his subordinates, and probably got a little too friendly with them. Um, sure. Causing probably a little bit of an HR issue, which specifically caused them to not pay him the $32 million in pay and bonuses over the life of his contract over, quote, serious misconduct. So that quote you mentioned, Stu, you’ve got no CEO. You’ve got a pretty indebted company right now that’s trading at a at a fairly low valuation relative to its super market cap. Here’s the ability for if rate cuts do come, they’ll be one of the companies lined up to take advantage of it. We very they very well might be able to be acquired for something that’s in a. Attractive target for somebody. Now the question is how do you piece together? Do you keep BP as part of the portfolio? Do you shell BP and toe to shell? And then you rip off BP to somebody in the United States to Chevron, take BP to shell take on right. BP and you you know, there’s a they got a lot of stuff going on, you know, to give you guys an idea. You know, I mean, they’ve got, you know, assets all over the world. They’ve got you know, they have some stuff in Libya, they’ve got, um, you know, a multiple of international projects. We know things in the North. It hit well, we do know they have a, a pretty UN investable renewables division, which seems to, you know, how all this stuff gets weighed in a potential deal is, is hilarious and how much they’re valuing you know some of the. [00:15:57][159.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:57] The big the big, uh, squirrel in the room eating is nuts is is the fact that shell and BP went after the renewables at such a rate. Their investors squeaked very, very loudly when the profits didn’t come in and they lost billions and out of the renewables. So the European oil companies lost it big and the US didn’t go as big. So anyway, uh, so if you get shell and BP demerge, you’re going to get an uglier baby. Yeah. [00:16:31][34.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:31] He it’s it’s still got three arms. All right, what’s next? [00:16:34][2.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:35] Let’s go to BRICs. Hey, you heard it here. Second, the other day when I, uh, said that, uh, Putin’s going to be the, uh, new president, it is now official. Uh, Putin is the president of BRICs for this year, and it is going to be expanding. Uh, this is just amazing. August, the bloc had announced that it would be admitting six new members. But now Putin is really sweeten in the pot for I believe it’s 30 more. Let me look at the number here. [00:17:05][30.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:05] Are we now that Putin’s president of BRICs. So we finally going to get able to apply as a podcast? [00:17:09][3.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:10] Uh, yes. I think Putin’s actually going to sponsor the podcast because he’s seen our, uh, imitations. I think he, you know, he’s he’s all jealous that, uh, he’s now watching the shark over the tank. So as the five, uh, let’s see, where is it? He said, I think it was about 30 that he’s planning on bringing on board. That’s huge. [00:17:29][18.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:30] It is. Uh, it’s going to be absolutely crazy. BRICs is becoming kind of the new powerhouse in the world, considering you have the G7 on one side, which is the, you know, United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Japan, and then you have all of these other countries, these BRICs members. You know, I definitely think Argentina is going to be one country to watch out for, to get in there. We know Saudi has now joined. We know that the BRICs is almost becoming the new OPEC in terms of global oil control. [00:17:58][28.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:59] Yep. It will be uh, because uh, also you heard it here. Second Japan. Maybe this is my opinion. Don’t have the facts in yet. What I’m, uh, trying to say is when you sit back and take a look. Japan. You heard it here first. Japan may be leaving the G7 in a few years. Because if if the United States weaponizes, uh, more pipelines to Japan. Japan is already, uh, grumpy enough at the U.S.. They’re taking energy deals in setting them up, being quiet about it. I guarantee you Japan is going to be in BRICs, in Japan is going to go away from the G7 because we. [00:18:42][43.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:43] Interesting. So now that’s a prediction right there. [00:18:45][2.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:46] That is you heard it here. Second. And I guarantee you I’ve gone on the record. If that happens you’re going to go back. Stew was right twice. [00:18:53][6.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:54] Blind mice fades cheese every once in a while. [00:18:55][1.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:56] Hey, one last one. As nuclear debate nears, French minister uh, sees potential for 14 new reactors. Had a great interview this morning with, uh, John Cash. He’s with your, uh, energy. It’s. You are there hyphen energy? He’s a uranium mining company in the US. Pretty cool. We had a fabulous talk. Uh, France is got, uh, a ballpark, 52, uh, reactors. They’re only running 25%. And so now they’re adding up to 14 reactors so they can sell it to Germany. Yeah. Sell the power. You can’t buy this kind of entertainment now. [00:19:41][45.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:42] It’s absolutely insane. That’s a great interview. We’ll definitely have to check that out when you release it. [00:19:47][5.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:47] Uh, whenever we get production, we got a bunch coming. We got a bunch more interviewing. We got lots of stuff cooking. [00:19:52][5.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:53] Yeah, we’ll go ahead and switch over to finance guys. But before we do that, as always, remember, guys, the news and analysis that you’ve heard and are about to hear is brought to you by the world’s greatest website, Energy News Beat.com The best place for all your energy news. Doing the team do a tremendous job. Making sure that web site stays up to speed with everything you need to know to be at the tip of the spear. Hit the description below to see all the different links, timestamps, and ways to interact with the show. But moving on to finance, we saw overall markets actually up fairly decent. Today. We saw Nasdaq climb two percentage points S&P 500 up 1.5 percentage points. You know really on the on the cusp of all time highs 30 year yields um dropped about a quarter percentage point. Dollar index stays fairly flat only down about 1/15 of a percentage point. Bitcoin up big $46,000 on the brink of $47,000. That’s about 6.7% on the day. We did see crude oil tumble somewhere around three percentage points. Brant crude oil stays the same at about 77. We’ll talk about the difference there. Natural gas actually saw briefly above $3 today. Stumbled back down to $2.91. Going back to crude oil though. Still, I think the main reason why we see oil falling was, was Saudi Arabia slashing what’s known as their Ops, their official selling price, which is basically their stated selling price for all of their crude. To give you guys an idea, they slashed it more than $2 a barrel to only $1 or excuse me, they slashed their official selling price by $2 a barrel, um, to one dollars and $0.50 a barrel, which is again, it used to be $3.50 between that Omar and Dubai quotes. Um, this is the biggest price cut in 13 months. It’s in line with market expectations as refiners have been falling for a while now for Saudi Arabia to make their middle their crude a little bit more, uh, affordable relative to other Middle Eastern producers, specifically from that arbitrage across the Atlantic, you know, uh, quote out of, uh, you know, a trader from a North Asian refinery, Saudi crude is still relatively more expensive compared to other regional crude. We are happy to see such prices making it much more affordable. Us to Saudi coming in and having to cut a little bit. You know, this is all despite their 2.2 million barrels per day cuts of OPEC plus um, you know, it’s clear that these market participants aren’t terribly convinced, um, that this reduction will be enough to stop a pretty big buildup of global inventories as we saw demand. Um, as we talked earlier in the show, demand seems to continue to grow, which only means that these global, larger global inventories are will be helpful. Now, do we think there’s I’m good. Do I think there’s going to be a massive price rally due to all this? Uh, remains to be seen. It depends. You know, if you’re Jeff Currie, who’s now the the University of Chicago Center for Energy Research, he’s the new head over there at University of Chicago. I saw him on quote yesterday. Energy is the most investable industry in America right now. And I he obviously hasn’t looked at any shale companies financials. So I saw one quote from our friend WTI realist. He quoted it and said local man announces he’s no longer being drug tested. That was the quote I was it was just cracking. Uh, the internet will always be undefeated. Our favorite WTI um, realist out there. Um, absolutely hilarious. Nothing else really stew on the docket for today from an oil and gas side again we southwestern Chesapeake. We’ve got the news of BP rumbling out there. Everyone’s kind of outside of that though. It’s kind of all quiet on the Western Front for us. What else should people be scared about? [00:23:16][203.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:23:17] I don’t know, we need to have you ask a new question in the future. Uh, you know, um. [00:23:23][5.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:23:23] You know, Levi and say everything’s great. You don’t have to. [00:23:26][2.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:23:26] Be honest with us. Uh, buckle up, hug your family, and, uh, look forward to the fantastic, uh, podcast now. [00:23:34][7.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:23:34] It’ll be great, guys. Well, as always, we appreciate you checking us out. World’s greatest podcast energy news. Be check us out. Energy news beat. For Stuart Turley I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:23:34][0.0][1372.1]

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The post Daily Energy Standup Episode #282 – Oil Demand Predictions, CBDC Support, BP Takeover Talks, BRICs Expansion, and More appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

ENERGY TRANSITION EPISODE #93 – GREEN SUBSIDIES

Highlights of the podcast:

01:25 – The Financial Times
02:21 – The science was settled on climate change
04:05 – The price is a decline in industrial output in industrial activity
05:42 – The attack is on all cars.
07:14 – 8000 projects trying to attach to the grid
08:23 – The US employment reports overstated 39,000 jobs in 2023
09:55 – The US Treasury
14:42 – The drop in Germany’s industrial production and their emissions and electricity consumption.
16:13 – Increasing the prices and costs to ratepayers.
19:00 – The EVs are incapable of providing the change in the energy transition.
19:37 – The microchip problem is going to be accentuated.
21:27 – The American petrochemical industry
24:57 – The World Grid
25:40 – The direct subsidies
26:25 – The Institute for Energy Research did a thing about federal energy subsidies for fiscal year 2022
27:54 –  The subsidies that go to the renewable industry
30:35 –  The UK is doing with offshore wind
34:05 –  Governments use green subsidies for one or more following purposes.
36:03 –  The United States with respect to energy have to do with the low income assistance.
42:24 – The farmers protesting
44:40 – The hydrogen corridor
45:53 – The UK wants to mix it in with the regular natural gas
46:28 – World Economic Forum announced that they’re now going to have a worldwide water shortage
48:41 – The fed will not be able to control inflation

 

 

The Podcast Hosts for The Energy Transition

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

Energy Consulting Specialist

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

President, and CEO, Sandstone Group, Podcast Host

Blubrry Podcast:

 

 

ENERGY TRANSITION EPISODE #93 – GREEN SUBSIDIES

 

Armando Cavanha [00:00:02] Energy realities. 93 green subsidies. Uh, after uh 92 episodes, the podcast is changing. Welcoming back, our great Irina Slav.

Irina Slav [00:00:19] Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I don’t deserve this, but.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:25] Uh uh uh uh uh, changing the name to energy realities that Stuart like, a lot. me too. Bringing newspaper headlines and preparing the house to receive guests in the future. Podcasts. Good morning. Good afternoon, Tammy Nemeth, Stuart Turley, Irina Slav and David Blackmon, David Blackmon is in location. He sent us his ship to sea.

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:54] I like that ship going into the sunset.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:57] Uh, yeah. Perfect. Okay, let’s start with newspaper headlines. Um, it in a place you brought some some, uh, headlines. So go ahead, please.

Irina Slav [00:01:09] Uh, that’s that’s my favorite headline this year. Uh, I think will be very difficult to top, uh, carbon emissions from research. Uh, the price we must pay to understand the world. Uh, this is an an opinion piece in the Financial Times. Uh, from from a professor in, uh. I’m sorry, I forgot her, uh, specialty was space physics. Something to do with space physics. Uh, but the arguments you put forward in this space is that, um. You know, some emissions are a bad. Most emissions are bad, but some emissions are good. There are necessary emissions from, uh, researchers who do work on on climate change. And she was worried that some of her colleagues working in this, uh, in this field, uh, were concerned about their emissions and were planning to scale down their work in order to reduce their carbon footprint, which is unacceptable because we must generate not we, but these researchers must generate these emissions. So to understand the world, I thought the science was settled on climate change. But they need to measure carbon emissions. They need to track them, and they need to find ways to reduce them apparent in new ways. Uh, as far as I can understand. So these emissions are okay. And what impressed me is, of course, the double standard, because it sounds exactly like John Kerry saying that. Oh, was it Bill gates? I think Bill gates did say this, that it’s okay that he flies around the world, uh, on a private jet because he’s, uh, spending billions on funding, uh, climate change related research and other activities. Uh, I’m not a huge fan of double standards. So this was a really blatant example of these double standards. You know, we should consume less of everything, including food, including fuel, including, you know, basic comforts such as heating and, uh, hot water or less. Researchers, researchers shouldn’t worry about their carbon footprint because it’s its emissions well spent. As the author said, I’m done.

Tammy Nemeth [00:03:36] That was awesome.

Armando Cavanha [00:03:38] You have another in German emissions?

Irina Slav [00:03:40] Yeah, I do. Related. Uh, Germany has made great strides to reduce its emissions. Uh, it has reduced its natural gas imports. Last year was wonderful for the climate change, uh, enthusiasts in Germany. Uh, but it came at a price. Uh, the price is a decline in industrial output in industrial activity, which is the media and, uh, official sources, uh, attributing to higher interest rates and weaker demand for these products, uh, at home and abroad. Uh, it has absolutely nothing to do with energy costs. And I expect the higher electricity imports of Germany, which was 62% last year, also have nothing to do with any of this. You know, with the decline in emissions at the expense of industrial output. And it’s not stagnant, by the way. It’s falling.

Tammy Nemeth [00:04:46] Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:04:47] Uh, surprisingly, Germany’s surprisingly, going into recession. Nobody expected this. Yeah.

Armando Cavanha [00:04:58] Good. Uh, you have another one.

Irina Slav [00:05:03] I just. Yeah. Good crop of headlines. This was just, um. Yeah. Apparently there’s a group who calls themselves the extinguishers. Um. Who? Um. Yeah. Vandalize an electric tesla, which is redundant. But anyway, we’ll, uh, forgive that. Um. Uh, yeah. They they let out the air from the tires of a Tesla. Apparently they didn’t they didn’t pay attention that it was a Tesla, or as Tammy suggested in our email exchange. The attack is on all cars. But what I found especially funny about this particular, uh, piece of news is that they’re not wrong. It’s not a gas guzzler, okay, but it is an energy guzzler. And that energy comes from hydrocarbons, from mining and processing. Uh, you know, energy demands, which is satisfied not by wind and solar, but by, uh, coal and gas. So they were right to, in a sense, to evangelize the Tesla much more right than vandalizing an internal combustion engine to.

Tammy Nemeth [00:06:27] That’s a good point. Yeah.

Armando Cavanha [00:06:29] Uh uh. But. Yeah, well, David’s not here. Let’s, uh, go directly to Stuart, please. Well,

Stuart Turley [00:06:39] You know Armando, I just love our government. I am kidding. Uh, the U.S. has billions for wind and solar projects. Good luck. Plug in the men. Uh, we are. We are printing money like you wouldn’t believe around the world. And now that we came out with the I.R.A. or the Inflation Reduction Act, um, our energy costs. And that’s in another headline that you have, uh, in and another one. But we started out in 2022 with 8000 projects trying to attach to the grid. We then, you know, fast forward to now, we have 24,000 energy projects waiting to attach to the grid. In our in team, we had a, um, in um, up in the Great Lakes area, five wind turbines, and they, uh, never installed any. They, they are giving back of the $50 million. They’re giving back 35 million. I went to OSU, so I’m going to have to do some math here. On how many millions that they did go ahead and spend on permitting and zero power. So, you know, let’s go ahead and print money. But guess who’s getting hurt. It’s the disproportionately impacted communities. It’s the taxpayers. I mean, this is anyway sorry about that.

Irina Slav [00:08:16] Uh, no, it’s. But.

Armando Cavanha [00:08:19] Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:08:19] All right, so we’re back to my beloved government. The US employment reports overstated 39,000 jobs in 2023. We got somebody that not only did not graduate from Oklahoma State, they actually created crayons. Uh, this government, they’ve been going out. And every time that they have an announcement, they increase the jobs numbers. And so in the Inflation Reduction Act and according to the Treasury Department, they’re bragging about how many green jobs they’re creating. Well, if you can’t connect them to the grid and you can’t get them done, these numbers are overstated. And then the percentages of increasing is totally wrong. So the fed is over here creating financial fiscal policies based on wrong numbers on the jobs. The government is saying they’ve created all these green jobs. So it’s like, you know, this is, you know, that old game that we used to play where you have a P under three different cups.

Irina Slav [00:09:37] There’s no game.

Stuart Turley [00:09:38] Yeah. There is no P under these. And they’re doing them anyway. Uh, it’s just despicable.

Armando Cavanha [00:09:48] Good. Another one they’ll have. Oh, this is from from the past Monday.

Stuart Turley [00:09:53] In this document from the US Treasury. Uh, low Income communities bonus credit program will do 1.8GW of capacity for the 23, uh, 2023 program. They, uh, tend to allocate seven, 700MW to facilitate low income communities. Here’s the thing. None of it’s happening on the 1.8GW. And I feel like I need to be Christopher Lloyd out of back to the future 6.4GW. I mean, you know, I need to grow my hair out because this is the only in in the great Meredith Angwin has has said that we we’ve talked to and Irene, I know you you know her I believe. And so she’s so cool. And it’s less than 30% of that nameplate gets to the grid. So they’re over there saying we’re going to find 1.8GW. And and it’s like, uh, you’re only going to get, you know, let’s say 35% of that, but you’re going to pay for more because you got to have coal plants and natural gas plants to remain on standby. So she’s right in her number. She came up with a 180% increase of money that you need instead of a 20%. So. And this is from their own numbers. I mean, my crayon works pretty good from their numbers. And Tammy is great with numbers, by the way. These guys I want to give the energy bad boys a shout out. This one. Uh, these guys were great in this article. Uh. They are. Uh, look them up on Substack. Uh, they’re not as funny as Irina. Uh, but they, uh, their rates in the data sheets that they brought out is the cost for energy over the last several years is skyrocketing the amount of money that we’re putting into the grid. And then you have the f e r f e r c that Tammy’s been talking about is announcing that we are going to have blackouts. So we have different government agencies. We have our politicians, and then we have people like the energy bad boys coming out and saying, hey, wait a minute. Let’s have a little accounting session in order to go ahead and see about if this actually works. So, uh, hat tip to the energy, uh, bad boys. Here’s one of their charge that’s in there. And when you take look back in 19, um, I’m old and I can’t see that that early one. Um, you know, you really take a look at that. And so you take a look at where we are now in 2022. Um, it’s not matching up, and and the money’s just pouring out the door in the. And there’s other graphs in there as well that I didn’t, uh, uh, send over, but the dollar per kilowatt per hour is like New York and California. Uh, I’ve said this before, and that is Governor Hochul put out 20% last year, increase in energy, 20% this year in 2023 and 2024. Looks like it’s going to be a 100% increase in energy, uh, for consumers. I got to check, you know, when that’s going to kick in. Could be 2024 could be 2025. But holy smokes, Batman. That’s not good.

Irina Slav [00:13:37] Yeah, well, they have to pay for all those offshore wind turbines, you know.

Tammy Nemeth [00:13:41] it’ll be connected.

Stuart Turley [00:13:42] You know

Irina Slav [00:13:44] They’re going to hold another ten to, to to which, uh, you know, previous hopefuls can reapply with new rates for the future electricity.

Stuart Turley [00:13:57] What’s a few billion between friends?

Irina Slav [00:13:59] Yeah, totally.

Stuart Turley [00:14:00] Yeah. I mean

Irina Slav [00:14:01]  It’s coming out of the governor’s pocket.

Stuart Turley [00:14:03] Oh, absolutely. I’d like to put a fund together, a Go Fund Me page to haul the dead whales off the beach and drop them off on the white House lawn. Wouldn’t that be fun.

Irina Slav [00:14:17] Huh? yeah but. Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:14:20] Okay. Sorry.

Armando Cavanha [00:14:21] No problem. Uh, Tammy, I’m not sure you sent more than one, but this is the one.

Tammy Nemeth [00:14:27] So I just sent one, and, you know, it links back to what everyone else has been saying. And I know this article is from, uh, back in November, but it’s very. Uh, important, because part of what Irina showed about the drop in Germany’s industrial production and their their emissions and electricity consumption. This is a huge indicator. And that’s their petrochemical industry is basically being decimated. And there’s other predictions that say it’ll be gone in about ten years. And in this article that having a blast had um, referenced, uh, BSF, um report to shareholders where he, the BASF, which is the big one of the biggest chemical producers in Europe in the world was which had this great chart where it showed the drop in petrochemical production in both Europe and the United States. I think United States was -1.6, Europe was negative four point something. And then if you looked at China and Asia, China is up 12.6%. And so they were bragging about how they were building this massive petrochemical plant in China in their investor thing, saying, okay, you know, Europe is kind of the the electricity prices are too much the the cost for all of these different things. There’s all these new taxes coming on. We’re just going to offshore to China. So China’s industry is booming while Germany is industrializing and Europe is essentially industrializing. And then this goes to the taxation issues. And, um, the different things you were talking about, Stu, where they’re increasing the, the, the prices and costs to ratepayers. Now, when Germany originally introduced its, uh, energy transition plan back in 2010 or 2011, they promised it would only cost the amount of a scoop of ice cream every month for people. So it, you know, uh, a euro or 90, €90 cents a month, that’s all it would cost extra. Clearly, that’s not true. So how come 13, 14 years later, we’re not looking at those numbers and saying, you know what, this energy transition thing doesn’t work. It costs more it governments have to subsidize and subsidizing things, which I know we’re going to get into right away. Subsidies are paid for by taxpayers. So the taxpayers not only have to pay more for the energy, they have to throw away money to these vested interests, whether it’s wind, solar or battery companies or whatever, in in order to get that, um, energy that isn’t reliable anyway. So they get hit on it like 2 or 3 times over. And we should be learning from what’s happening in Europe and Germany and not make those same mistakes. And I feel bad that every Western country is going down this same pathway where all it does is cost more for people.

Stuart Turley [00:17:36] Tammy, can I add something on to your point? Your excellent point, and I’m sorry for complimenting you this morning. I know it’s Monday morning, but, um. Uh, China, uh, Governor Newsom, the guy with the good hair, which I’m very jealous about, he, uh, is sending out, um, they’re shutting down all the Petro, the downstream, and the, uh, thing to. And they’re just killing China so they can’t keep their cities clean. But when President Xi comes in, they clean up the city, they get it done, and then they have meetings. And in those meetings, you pointed out the growth in China’s, uh, downstream. Um, and you also take a look. They’re increasing in a million barrels a day that they’re able to, uh, increase in their Petro. So California and I’m trying to get a story on this, is looking at importing all their gasoline and diesel and petrochemicals from China. They’re killing the U.S. energy independence. And not only are you bringing up that we’re losing industry to China. Um, it’s a horrible thing that our governor of California is handing over, uh, highest gasoline prices in California in the EVs are incapable of, uh, providing the change in the energy transition. Tammy, your points were outstanding.

Armando Cavanha [00:19:10] But Stuart and the the the project to back back to the US, uh, chips and other um, um, items manufactured in China is is is working well.

Stuart Turley [00:19:23] The, uh, chips.

Armando Cavanha [00:19:25] Chips, for instance.

Tammy Nemeth [00:19:27] My, uh. Oh. Like a microchip.

Irina Slav [00:19:29] The bands.

Stuart Turley [00:19:30] Oh. The chip. Excuse me. I thought you were saying jeeps. And so, uh. So, no, um, the microchip problem is going to be accentuated. In fact, uh, China had an article. There was an article out this morning on China and the chips, the the, uh, this came from the or the Russian, uh, news source which Irina and I have talked about. It’s actually not bad. So, I mean.

Irina Slav [00:19:57] I know it’s not bad. I’ve commented on the air there.

Stuart Turley [00:20:00] It is. I mean, I’m like, you know, it’s pretty sad when you have to go to Russia to get the news, but, you know, um, when you sit back and it is it’s funny. Yeah. I mean, um, the chip is going to be accentuated by, uh, Z. President Z is already saying that he has acquired Taiwan and our chip sanctions and the weaponization of the US dollar against, uh, the world is pathetic. And, um, we’re weaponizing sanctions against China, and they’re calling it unfair. So I think it may be a personal opinion that it may be another, um, excuse to invade Taiwan.

Armando Cavanha [00:20:47] Uh, yeah, because the US is losing petrochemical industry, but, uh, it’s gaining, uh, the manufacturing, uh, electronics. Is it true? Maybe.

Tammy Nemeth [00:21:00] That’s a that’s an interesting point. I know that they’re trying to subsidize. If we get onto the topic of subsidies, they’re trying to subsidize the the chip manufacturing in various jurisdictions. And I noticed that Brookfield Investments in Renewables is one of the partners in that, which is a mark Carney, uh, endeavor. And now that he’s part of Bloomberg, which is kind of interesting because Bloomberg is also funding the Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, which is to shut down the American petrochemical industry. Like, I mean, it’s it’s crazy. So I mean, on the one hand, um, the United States is trying to generate its own microchips in order to reduce dependance on, on other jurisdictions, particularly Taiwan. But the thing is, okay, so you if you let’s say you home source your chip manufacturing, but you kill your petrochemical industry which you require for every other bit of defense production, and you’re going to make yourself dependent on your biggest potential imminent enemy. It’s it’s absurd. It’s beyond absurd. It’s it’s dangerous. And what the heck are they doing now?

Armando Cavanha [00:22:09] Uh, I have only one headline slot the headlines, the short video, not specifically of, uh, on energy, but that is very curious for me.

The New York TImes News [00:22:16] Is levels of impact. Your compensation could be impacted. Okay. You have to force behaviors. Force behaviors.

Armando Cavanha [00:22:28] Stuart. Um, I’m not sure that I got this point of the president of the world, but, uh, force behaviors, behaviors. What’s the meaning of this expression?

Stuart Turley [00:22:40] Do you really want to ask me this on a live, on air? Um. Uh. Hope. Hang on. I need to just take a deep breath and make sure that I don’t get thrown off the air.

Tammy Nemeth [00:22:54] Still, remember, the internet is forever.

Stuart Turley [00:22:57] I know, that’s why I’m actually my beloved partner, Michael Tanner. I I’m trying to make sure that he doesn’t fire me. So when when we take a look at the, uh, take a look at Blackrock. Blackrock, uh, is one of the most, um, nonsensical organizations on the planet because of their, uh, um, uh, uh, dealings with the world. Uh, Economic Forum and the World Health Organization. Larry Fink is at the head of this. And I also want to say that I’m not suicidal. So if that is it, that’s a joke that I don’t know that we’ll get censored. But by that comment, they are they have weaponized their investments and they have tried to cancel. Irina, has talked about this extensively on her Substack, and that is the lack of funding, uh, for, um, uh, carbon, uh, in the name in there trying to say ESG investing is good. So they try to force people to EVs to renewables by their investments. And it’s even more despicable when they force Africa to green energy and not let them use their great natural resources. So by him saying he’s going to force people is an admission, just like, um, uh, Charles Schwab, uh, saying that they’re going to take down the world, uh, in they, uh, told everybody they’re going to do a pandemic. They then told everybody they’re going to have a, uh, internet crisis and a grid crisis. I’ve got several, uh, stories on the grid crisis that is, uh, looking at cyber, um, and physical, uh, attacks on the U.S. grid. And they’re also saying, you know, as far as the World Grid as well, too. So it’s the world grid and the world that, uh, internet that they’re looking to attack. I didn’t create, I didn’t create this on my own. It’s all on YouTube.

Armando Cavanha [00:25:10] Perfect. Tammy, we talked about the history of subsidies a few weeks ago, and, uh, not specifically for green subsidies. Uh, are there wind subsidies and fossil fuel subsidies? Uh, how does it work?

Tammy Nemeth [00:25:28] You know, that’s a really good question. And I think it requires a lot of research and whatnot just because there’s different, um, different incentives out there. Right? So you have the tax incentives, then you have the direct subsidies where they’re getting loan guarantees or grants, like actual grants that they don’t have to pay back or whatever. And I’m going to try and share my screen. We’ll see if. If there’s some work. Uh. Okay. Select window. I’m going to try, um. Okay. Is that working?

Armando Cavanha [00:26:07] You look good.

Tammy Nemeth [00:26:09] How about this? Can you see that?

Armando Cavanha [00:26:12] Not yet.

Stuart Turley [00:26:13] You still look

Tammy Nemeth [00:26:14] Okay. So. Yes. Thank you. Um. It’s saying StreamYard has blocked it. So anyway, um, the Institute for Energy Research did a thing about federal energy subsidies for fiscal year 2022, and they published this back in August, and it showed that renewables received, um, up almost 50% of all in subsidies and incentives, and the majority of the subsidies that renewables received, and that’s wind and solar are direct grants. So the petrol, um, the petroleum industry and coal and nuclear combined received about 15%. And it was mostly incentives. So tax incentives are when, uh, a jurisdiction will encourage you to move their or um, will offer different sort of tax, uh, write offs and whatnot. A lot of the, the incentives for the oil and gas industry have to do with exploration and production. So if you’re out there, um, exploring or exploration development, you can write off certain wells or whatever that were not productive or something and, and various other elements along that, that sort of operational chain and, and other tax incentives are ones that almost all businesses get to deduct from their taxes. So when you have a tax incentive, it’s something that allows you to, um, uh, you’re maybe not paying as much taxes as you might have been, but it’s not money that is handed out from government at the front. A lot of the subsidies that go to the renewable industry, particularly wind and solar and battery manufacturing, um, are direct subsidies. And so the government is actually giving money, taxpayers money to companies to build or, um, hire people or do any of these things. And a lot of that money, it doesn’t have to be paid back. Um, or sometimes it’ll say, well, maybe you should pay it back, but then they don’t really they go out of business or, or whatever. And so what I find interesting is that historically, there’s been a shift in the definition and meaning of a subsidy. So before if you had different business tax arrangements or whatnot, that would be considered, um, a tax issue, but now it’s being counted as a subsidy, and that’s so that you can put numbers together in order to demonize the oil and gas industry in comparison to the renewable industry, and trying to say, sort of like what I was talking about with respect to the emissions, some subsidies, um, are better than others, right? So if you subsidize wind and solar, that’s just okay. But definitely don’t give any kind of tax incentive to the oil and gas industry. And one last point I wanted to make. There’s countries like China that, um, subsidize their own industries significantly in order to squeeze out potential international competition and also to provide an advantage in the export market. So I think there’s lots of different ways that subsidies are implemented within, um, the, the energy space. And a lot of it depends on whether it’s state run or private entities and so on. But in the end, taxpayers suffer.

Stuart Turley [00:29:40] Excellent.

Armando Cavanha [00:29:41] Excellent. Irina, uh, help us please  subsidies incentives. Non, uh, return financing is a kind of donations, uh, money for friends.

Irina Slav [00:29:54] Uh, that’s a great way of putting it. Yeah. We’re going to support only the industries we like, and we’re going to accuse the other industries of being bad and not deserving. This support essentially does come down to donations. But these donations, I mean, donations sounds voluntary. Yeah. You know, these are not exactly voluntary because as Tammy said, they are coming out of our pockets, all of our pockets, just because somebody in the government decided that these are the industries we’re going to be supporting, whatever, uh, happens, you know, which is what the UK is doing with offshore wind, which is what the US is doing. Well, the state of New York at least, is doing with offshore wind. You know, wind developers said this was the most blatant example of the nature of these green subsidies to me. Offshore developers, wind developers said this is getting too expensive for us. We closed our contracts, we close our deals at, uh, you know, much lower prices for our electricity when everything was different and raw materials were, uh, cheap and everything was cheap. Uh, borrowing was cheap. And now this has changed, which absolutely nobody could have anticipated, because obviously there’s no such thing as inflation or, uh, in. First rate hikes. Or raw material inflation. Really? Uh, so we can no longer afford to develop these projects and break even and make a profit on them. And the governments. Instead of saying, well, sorry, make them cheaper. They say, sure, we’ll just give you more money. Just apply again in Attenders, which is what the New York governor, the governor did. Let’s, you know, do another attender and we’ll we’ll agree higher prices for your electricity. I’m sorry, wasn’t the wind supposed to be one of the cheapest source of electricity in the world? And the media keeps repeating it, even though it’s not. I mean, BP and Equinor gave up a project, an offshore wind project in New York, because despite the governor’s plan to re hold the tenders, apparently they would still not make money from it. So they just quit it.

Tammy Nemeth [00:32:25] So what you’re saying is that the energy reality is that wind and solar are not cheaper, and they’re not giving up handing out subsidies.

Irina Slav [00:32:34] It’s an amazing revelation. I know that we all know it. They’re not cheap and and they clearly cannot stand on their own panels and, you know, turbine posts. Because governments need to continuously pour more and more money into them because they can, you know, they can turn in a profit without these subsidies.

Armando Cavanha [00:33:03] Yeah. Stuart, affordability. You are a guy that are speaking this term a lot of times and that. So green subsidies may affect the social equity or energy policies. Uh moving money to uh benefit some groups of interests is money for friends.

Stuart Turley [00:33:25] Um. Well, yes. Uh, it it appears that when you take a look at the investors in, um. Um. I’m just trying to see what Tammy was doing here. Bear with me. This should bring up. Uh, number five, slide five from, uh, the World trade, uh, rules. And it even describes, uh, it says it’s sharing. But, um, there is one, uh, line in here. Governments use green subsidies for one or more following purposes. Enhance public goods. Enhance quasi public goods. Is knowledge base capital to redistribute income to compensate for market failure, to compensate for government failure? Uh, I’m I, I thought this was ah, this is almost like an investor relations person writing this or a novelist. I’m not sure which, uh, giving subsidies is generally considered part of the domestic policy space of governments. And in the US, there are people that have great heart for the disproportionately impacted communities. But solar, I think there’s more, um, room for solar than there is wind. It is still none of them are recyclable and sustainable. Uh, but even by the World Trade Organization, their definition is wealth redistribution into the rich. Did that answer that question?

Armando Cavanha [00:35:14] Yes. But at the same time, the argument that the, uh, people, uh, have is that, uh, you can create new jobs and you can reduce greenhouse emissions. What this approach means for you.

Stuart Turley [00:35:31] The only reason the U.S. reduce their carbon emissions. I think Tammy brought this one up on one episode was the elimination of coal plants, um, and increasing natural gas plants, and now they’re trying to kill natural gas plants.

Tammy Nemeth [00:35:47] Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:35:49] Yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:35:49] So if I could just link to what Stu was saying about, uh, helping out the redistribution of wealth and so on, a significant portion, probably 25 to 30% of the so-called subsidies in the United States with respect to energy have to do with the low income assistance. So people on the lower end of the of the income scale who are having difficulty paying their electrical bills and their, um, heating bills, and they basically any of their energy will get a subsidy from the federal government in order to help them make their payments. Right. And quite often in developing nations, that’s what you see when they talk about eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, they mean eliminating any kind of assistance to the people that keeps the price low, because what the people pushing the energy transition often don’t want to talk about is that they’re very keen on making all energy more expensive. And I hate to say it, they lie. They lie about it, but they keep repeating the lie that wind and solar is cheaper, and if we just build more, it’ll be cheaper. But it isn’t the. As I Rena pointed out, it’s not just the cost of the, uh, the facilities themselves and the redundancies that are required. It’s the money that comes from the taxpayers in order to build them in the first place, which you shouldn’t need to have to do. And so ultimately, it’s all about making it more expensive for everybody and then providing a little bit of help.

Irina Slav [00:37:24] And then providing help. Yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:37:26] And providing help. Right.

Irina Slav [00:37:27] Yeah. Yeah. Because we’re going to make your electricity five times as expensive. But we will help the poorest among you with a special fund that is going to be filled with money from. The higher electricity prices.

Tammy Nemeth [00:37:46] And that you in the middle are

Stuart Turley [00:37:50] And who’s getting richer? Why is it that we have al Gore?

Irina Slav [00:37:55] The elected officials are getting rich and their friends?

Stuart Turley [00:37:58] Uh, al Gore is one of the richest dudes around, and he’s not worked today in his life, so I’m kind of concerned. You know, I’d like to see his w-2s. Sorry. Did I just say that? Did I say this?

Tammy Nemeth [00:38:13] His generation investment company goes around and and, uh, provides funding for a lot of these initiatives, such as Octopus energy. And, you know, he’s they’re pushing governments to embrace this transition than investing in companies that benefit from it. John Kerry did the same thing. Al Gore does the same thing. I know Mark Carney does the same thing. And then it’s like, is that not a conflict of interest?

Stuart Turley [00:38:42] May that go back to.

Irina Slav [00:38:43] The good conflict of interest? I’m sorry, Stu, that we can ignore in the same way that we can ignore the emissions from climate research. Yeah. That’s right. This is different.

Stuart Turley [00:38:54] The legal. I’m sorry. Uh, the legal document that I was reading from is from the European University Institute. The working papers, um.

Irina Slav [00:39:05] European University Institute.

Stuart Turley [00:39:08] Institute for working papers by Robert Shamoon and, uh, global government programs. So, uh, I’ll forward it to you guys.

Armando Cavanha [00:39:19] Uh, let me go to another points. Very quick offer for me in Brazil. Um, some people say that green subsidies involve local content. Local content means America first. Uh, Germany recovering industries. How do you see local content in this? Uh. Let’s see. Environment, energies.

Stuart Turley [00:39:44] Who do you want on that one? America’s not, uh, in a U.S. first. Um, yeah. Uh, it’s just, uh, it goes back to this discussion and I’m all for subsidies, as Tammy, uh, described for the disproportionately impacted communities. But that goes back to the Al Gore’s and the Carrey’s of the world, because they elevate the price of the energy and then it goes back. So, um, America’s not first.

Irina Slav [00:40:17] Yeah, but they’re trying I mean, they’re trying to build all new supply chains that will depend less on imported commodities, uh, materials. Now, this will take decades, if it’s possible at all.

Stuart Turley [00:40:28] No, it’s going to China, Irina. I mean, the money that we

Irina Slav [00:40:35] I know Stu I know Stu I know, you know, I know this.

Tammy Nemeth [00:40:37] I mean, I. Think say it. That they’re saying that in order to try and prevent the people who support the America First thing from being angry because you have to follow the actions, right? You know, they say these things, oh, we’re going to re shore and, and French shore and all this kind of

Irina Slav [00:40:57] Yeah Exactly, it’s absurd, Its it’s absurd. I mean who will believe them. I mean yeah, there are many people who would believe them because they watch them news their media, uh, and they hear it repeated all the time. But yes, basically it’s what some developing countries are doing with their natural resources, like Indonesia. Years ago they remember when they banned nickel or, uh, exports. Yeah. In order to force the foreign companies mining that or to build processing plants in Indonesia, which is absolutely a great idea. They shouldn’t have had to force them, but they had to. Yeah. Uh uh um uh um, sure, other resource rich countries will be doing the same thing demanding local content. I don’t know how local content will work. Uh, with regard to cost, uh, if Europe is any. Indication, it’s not going to work well, everywhere because, uh, you know, Europeans, uh, trying to develop, also develop their own supply chains in wind and solar, but is just too expensive.

Armando Cavanha [00:42:04] Expensive. Yes.

Irina Slav [00:42:06] Very expensive because of energy costs.

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:08] Yeah. And with their all their new ESG rules that kick in this year, I really don’t see how they can do it. Which is why you see BASF and the other chemical producers and whatnot offshoring.

Stuart Turley [00:42:20] They went to China and now we have the farmers protesting because they can’t get fertilizer.

Irina Slav [00:42:29] No, that’s requesting the removal of, uh, diesel, uh, subsidies.

Stuart Turley [00:42:34] Yes

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:37] Tax incentives. Right. Because they were. Yeah. Tax incentives.

Stuart Turley [00:42:41] I’m all in for supporting the farmers. I’m all in. I think if the oil and gas industry paid for farmers. Diesel. I’m all in. I think that if we could do that, that would be a fabulous way. And it. But you see, that would not be a redistribution of wealth that would actually be helping the food supply as opposed to that, and take some of the profits from oil and gas and give it to the farmers. That would help reduce costs. If we do the subsidies, it comes from the governments and they skim off stuff. This goes back to our earlier discussion of the US jobs. Mhm. 40 an estimated 40%, whatever the numbers are that they’re creating are government jobs. That’s not good.

Armando Cavanha [00:43:31] Yeah. Uh, Tammy, uh, I suppose I got your link here. Can you see this? Yes.

Stuart Turley [00:43:39] Oh, there you go.

Tammy Nemeth [00:43:40] Yeah. So that’s the EU, um, European University Institute that, uh, Stu was talking about. And then I think Stu sent the publication there. He sent a link to it.

Armando Cavanha [00:43:55] Okay. And there was another one that to show this. No, sorry. This one. No. No. Sorry. Uh, let’s see again,

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:11] Oh, that. That’s from 2014, Stu

Armando Cavanha [00:44:14] Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:44:14] It was still applicable.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:16] Yeah. For sure.

Armando Cavanha [00:44:17]  There. Just two comments. Presentation.

Irina Slav [00:44:26] Hi. Okay.

Stuart Turley [00:44:28] You know what a great. Uh. Oh, it, uh, does. And I apologize for butchering your name. Um. Great question. Um, uh, hydrogen, the hydrogen corridor that Irina and I laughed about the other day, that they’re putting it in hydrogen. From a technical aspect, Irina has written extensively on the amount of water that is needed, how difficult it is to put it in pipelines. I love the idea of hydrogen, but I believe that hydrogen may pull a Hindenburg on the consumer.

Irina Slav [00:45:04] It will sooner or later.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:08]  and the UK is investing Heavily in it. Yeah.

Armando Cavanha [00:45:13] Uh, and then, uh, us was the same. Yeah, but hydrogen is not an energy source. It’s, uh, like a battery. Uh, so you need to manufacture fabricate hydrogen. It’s a different approach.

Stuart Turley [00:45:28] A lot of energy is fabricated.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:31] Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:45:32] Oh. Sorry. Tammy.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:33] No. Go ahead, go ahead. You’re right.

Stuart Turley [00:45:37] The second time in my life.

Irina Slav [00:45:42] Is dangerous. Hydrogen is dangerous.

Armando Cavanha [00:45:45] That’s. That’s a good point. Yes. And expensive.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:48]  You pay that. That’s right. It’s expensive. And it’s. And it’s volatile. And the UK wants to mix it in with the regular natural gas and, uh, put it through the pipelines to people’s homes.

Irina Slav [00:46:01] Yeah, but they gave up on two of these projects. Yeah, because people rebelled.

Tammy Nemeth [00:46:07] Yeah. And now they’ve released some new statements. Um, just before Christmas.

Stuart Turley [00:46:12] Can I can I throw this one out? Irina, you had a Substack article that was phenomenal. I did not know how much. Uh, sorry for complimenting you, but I did not know how much water it took in order to create hydrogen. And the World Economic Forum announced that they’re now going to have a worldwide water shortage because they’re going to be controlling water in Idaho. They just said that if you have a water source on your land, if you don’t claim it within X number of time period, the state now controls it and will, uh, govern it. So it is now a water grab. They failed it. Covid they’re going to go worse than Covid and then they’ve even announced it. So if they told you the pandemic is coming and then they have told you they’re going to do this, you kind of listen to what they’re saying with their actions. And why is hydrogen gaining speed its side? The second order of magnitude of hydrogen is a water catastrophe. Irina brought that. That’s her point.

Irina Slav [00:47:27] I didn’t.

Armando Cavanha [00:47:28] Yeah. Very good. So, um, the conclusions, uh, may be that, uh, green subsidies are. What?

Irina Slav [00:47:39] Obscene.

Stuart Turley [00:47:40] A wealth distribution.

Irina Slav [00:47:44] There are money grab.

Armando Cavanha [00:47:45] money.

Stuart Turley [00:47:47] I want to give back to the disproportionately impacted communities. I don’t want this to be seen as, uh. I’m all in. Uh, and it goes back to Africa being taken advantage of. Africa is being taken advantage of by the West again. And I applaud Africa for standing up. Let’s. I mean, it’s like Germany. Tammy brought up such fantastic points about the economic failure of Germany because the low cost energy, um, it’s all about the global effects. Like George McMillan has been on. My podcast of power of energy is Why People go to War. Yeah, it’s also why we can’t fight, uh, inflation until we get energy prices low. The fed will not be able to control inflation. And I’m sorry I’m such an energy fan, but I’m also an energy humanitarian that wants to eliminate poverty, energy, poverty and poverty around the world. And none of these policies are doing it.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:59] So it makes it worse. And I think, you know, when you say that you would like to help, the ones who can’t afford energy shouldn’t be that expensive in the first place. And that’s the problem, right? Is that with all of these subsidies and taxpayer redistribution or whatever. All it does is drive up cost. And that hurts everybody, especially the people at near the bottom. So it shouldn’t be that high. Period

Armando Cavanha [00:49:21]  It’s not solution. Yeah people, thank you so much. Irina was a pleasure to have you back home.

Irina Slav [00:49:29] Likewise.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:31] And David, we are waiting for you from your vacation. So come back soon.

Stuart Turley [00:49:37] If that was his ship. I’m hanging out with the wrong guy. And you know, he didn’t invite me on his boat. Uh, thank you all very much.

Tammy Nemeth [00:49:46] Thank you.

Irina Slav [00:49:47] Have a great day. Bye bye.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:49] Bye. bye

Irina Slav [00:49:49] Bye bye.

 

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Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates formally joined the BRICS group of major emerging economies on January 1, 2024, expanding the bloc’s footprint in the Global South and growing its economic and political clout on the world stage, establishing a real counterweight to the Western-dominated G7.

In August, the bloc had announced that it would be admitting six new members, including Argentina.

However, as Statista’s Felix Richter reports, the South American nation declared a formal rejection of the offer on 29 December, 2023 with Argentina’s President Javier Milei stating in a letter published by several media outlets that the membership “was not considered appropriate at this time.”

Speaking on the expansion of the BRICS, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said at a press briefing:

“We shared our vision of BRICS as a champion of the needs and concerns of the peoples of the Global South. These include the need for beneficial economic growth, sustainable development and reform of multilateral systems.”

He also indicated that the addition of the six new members is just the beginning of the bloc’s expansion process.

“As the five BRICS countries, we have reached agreement on the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures of the BRICS expansion process, which has been under discussion for quite a while,” he said.

“We have consensus on the first phase of this expansion process, and further phases will follow.”

Adding major fossil-fuel producers may give the bloc more scope to challenge the dollar’s dominance in oil and gas trading by switching to other currencies, a concept referred to dedollarization.

However, expansion is “more about politics and less about economics,” according to analysts at Bloomberg Economics.

Other groupings that are already promoting a move toward a more “multipolar” world – and away from the post-Cold War dominance of the US — include OPEC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), and the African Union.

Source: Zerohedge.com

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Standard Chartered have predicted that oil demand growth in the current year will clock in at a robust 1.54 mb/d and 1.41 mb/d in 2025.
StanChart has forecast that global oil demand growth in 2024-2025 will remain above the longer-term average. 
The analysts have predicted that global monthly demand will move above 104 mb/d for the first time ever in August 2024 before eclipsing 105 mb/d in August 2025.

Crude oil futures fell back on Thursday’s session after making big gains in the previous session, with the latest weekly data showing a “massive” increase in U.S. domestic distillate and gasoline stockpiles, suggesting anemic demand for oil products likely due to well above normal temperature cycle this winter.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. crude inventories for the final week of 2023 fell by a bigger-than-expected margin at 5.5M barrels; however, gasoline inventories surged by 10.9M barrels, marking the biggest weekly buildup in more than three decades.

Meanwhile, distillate inventories jumped by 10.1M barrels, way higher than the analysts’ consensus, while distillate product supplied fell to its lowest level since 1999. Distillate product supplied is usually considered a proxy for demand.

“Fuel demand is once again stalling and that’s putting pressure on crude futures,” BOK Financial’s Dennis Kissler has said.

Whereas those reports appear like an overdose of bad news for oil bulls, part of Wall Street is saying to expect good times ahead.

To wit, commodity experts at Standard Chartered have predicted that oil demand growth in the current year will clock in at a robust 1.54 mb/d and 1.41 mb/d in 2025. Further, Stanchart says that decelerating non-OPEC supply growth and strong demand will support prices at higher levels.

The bullish StanChart report has come out just days before the EIA is set to publish its first set of detailed monthly oil supply and balances on 9 January.

StanChart has forecast that global oil demand growth in 2024-2025 will remain above the longer-term average.

Once again, China is expected to lead in projected demand growth, with the world’s biggest importer of oil expected to see an uptick in demand to the tune of 553,000 barrels per day in 2024 and 373,000 in 2025 while India’s demand growth is expected to come in at 329 kb/d in 2014 and 373 kb/d in 2025.

The analysts have predicted that global monthly demand will move above 104 mb/d for the first time ever in August 2024 before eclipsing 105 mb/d in August 2025. StanChart sees non-OPEC demand growth outstripping supply growth in both years, leading to an increase in the call on OPEC crude by 520 kb/d in 2024 and 880 kb/d in 2025. Call on OPEC is an estimate of oil production volume required of OPEC countries to balance the global supply and demand for crude oil.

After hitting an all-time high in 2023, StanChart has predicted that U.S crude oil supply will continue rising, but at a slower clip.

The commodity experts have predicted U.S. oil production growth will slow from 1.009 mb/d in 2023 to 464 kb/d in 2024 before slowing even further to 137 kb/d in 2025. However, StanChart has acknowledged that current drilling and capex plans by U.S. producers suggest potential downside to its forecasts.

StanChart’s forecasts align with the EIA’s which also expects little incremental crude oil supply in 2024. EIA estimates that U.S. crude output clocked in at 13.2 mb/d for the week spanning 21-28 December, and has forecast that the monthly average will not get back to 13.3 mb/d until December 2024

Another bullish year?

Last year proved to be an annus mirabilis for U.S. stock investors, with most corners of the market defying bearish expectations and turning on the afterburners to hit record highs. Unfortunately, Energy, Utilities and Consumer Staples stood out as the only sectors that failed to finish in the green roiled by rising interest rates.

Thankfully,  the Fed has slammed the brakes on the rate hikes and signaled it could cut rates by a significant margin in 2024. At its last meeting in December, the Fed held rates steady in the 5.25% to 5.5% range, and also signaled they would cut rates by at least 75 basis points in the current year.

Wall Street is bullish about these developments, and has dubbed 2024 ‘‘the year of the pivot.’’

Currently, there’s a lot of uncertainty regarding the supply/demand fundamentals in the global oil markets, something that could lead to a sideways trading in oil prices in the near term. Short-term traders can play the expected volatility using funds like DBO and PXJ that offer easy and cost-effective exposure to energy commodity futures.

Long-term bulls can, however, use the recent selloff of energy stocks to build positions in companies with healthy balance sheets including those with strong cash flows and a reliable dividend history.

Source: Oilprice.com

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A Natural Gas Plant Guarding US Northeast From Winter Blackouts Is at Risk – Consumers at mortal risk

Iran’s oil trade with China stalls as Tehran demands higher prices

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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? It is. Monday, January 8th, 2024. Here are our top headlines for the day. A natural gas plant guarding US northeast from winter blackout is at risk. Consumers are at mortal risk. Next up India is an emerging energy supplier to the EU. Major factors Iran’s oil trade with China stalls as Tehran demands higher uh prices California electric trucks mandate reduces transportation productivity and has other challenges. I will then dive in and cover, um, some oil and gas, uh, finance, high level stuff. We also have Apache and Kalon officially announcing a merger of about $4.5 billion of all stock equity, and then finally Southwestern and Chesapeake near $17 billion merger. My man Stuart Turley, kick us off. Where do you want to begin? [00:01:05][50.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:05] Oh, hey, let’s start off with our buddies up there in the east. Uh, natural gas plant guarding us northwest from winter blackouts is at risk. Michael, this is actually sad. Um, this game from Bloomberg, this is actually the LNG import facility right out of Boston. And here’s where it gets really sad. They have had to use this. Everett is the LNG import facility and it has kept the North eastern folks alive. I am not kidding about that alive. They kept the power plants going and the facility shut down underscores the challenges facing the American grid transition to cleaner energy as it accelerates. Climate change triggers wilder weather. Here. [00:01:57][52.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:59] Let me some Bloomberg baby. Let me see Bloomberg. [00:02:01][1.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:02] Oh yeah. But he they bring up some great points. Everett was a key resource in providing additional gas supplies to New England during extreme cold, said Gary uh Cunningham, director of market research at risk for Traditional Energy. Um, here’s where it gets in with the FARC. Michael, they have been saying all along that our grid is near breaking point because of adding the renewables without the storage, which we can’t afford. I just threw that in. He didn’t say it. There are going to be facilities that are fossil based and climate damaging, that are going to go off line, and they’re going to be replaced with alternatives that public policy and markets now have chosen. Here’s where Governor Hochul, you have heard me laugh. I mean, talk about governor, uh, Hochul saying that she’s got a 20% increase in energy this year, which was 2023. They got another one coming up in 2024. And then in 2025, they’ve got gas. For how much. Oh 100. [00:03:08][66.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:09] So yeah it’s it’s pretty. Here’s what I think is is hilarious is Bloomberg’s trying to say really really without saying it. They’re trying to say oh this is not a great idea. Everybody else is in favor of it. I mean, they’re see you got one. Quoting here. Gas is often seen as the transition fuel. As the world moves to more environmentally friendly ways to generate heat and power. Everett sign is a Everett’s closure is a sign of that shift. But they’re shutting natural gas. So on one breath they’re trying to say, well, you know, really natural gas is the transition fuel, but closing it down is a shift away from that, which is not good, because we’re going to just jump from one iceberg to the other. Again, we have to transition into it. It is hilarious how, you know, I mean, good luck there. Good luck in New York. [00:03:54][45.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:55] Good luck. You know what, uh, one of the funniest lines that I got feedback, which is one of the rare times that I am funny, is, uh, we took a poll, and that was all those in favor of letting, uh, New York go with 100% no fossil fuels. That means anything delivered with diesel. Anything. You see where I’m going with it? You’d have no clues. No, uh, no clothes, no food. All those in favor of letting New York without fossil fuels 100% renewable. I’m in. Let’s try it. Okay, let’s go to the next one. Michael, this is kind of fun. Iran’s oil trade with China stalls as Tehran demands higher prices. Michael, this is from, uh, our buddies over there. Readers. Uh, China’s oil trade with Iran has stalled, and they are looking at trading in, uh, wine as opposed to the, uh, U.S. dollar. Here’s where it gets. And it goes 5 to $6 a barrel below. Uh, Brant. But they have now come out and said, uh, the China’s smaller independent refiners, called teapots, have become Tehran’s top client since the first of buying Iranian oil in 2019. There, they absorb 90% of Iran’s total exports. Uh, usually passed off. This is huge. But what is not in this article is that China has brought on almost another million barrels per day of refining capacity. So now they have outgrown the Iranian ability for them to say, hey. Yeah, you’re going to listen to us. [00:05:43][108.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:44] Yeah. And remember, China is buying. This is a pretty steep discount. Back in November when those agreements were originally struck. It was about $10 a barrel. Looks like it’s come down in the kind of the latest offer to somewhere between. Or last month, cargoes were bought between $5 and $0.50 and 650. Now it looks like the latest discount they’re trying to negotiate is for 50. But it’s interesting. I mean, the question is, does I read does it have that many people to sell to. So why are you poking the bear that it’s it’s it’s like the kid that complains to his mom. What’s his mom? I don’t like your dinner. Well, kid, you’re not getting dinner from anywhere, so don’t bite the hand that feeds. [00:06:20][35.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:20] You know, and you don’t want to poke the panda bear because everybody says they’re cute to poke. Stick your hand in there. Have you seen that? One of the grid, where the guy’s sitting there and he’s getting a picture and a panda comes rolling in our church? June on the guy. Hey, by the way, we’re at this point. Let’s fly in. Uh, I got a picture that I’m going to send to the, uh, the team. Let’s fly in bear country. I got up at three this morning, and I was leaving Bear Country, and I got a picture of me in front of the sign of the bear crossing. Anyway. Okay, let’s go on to the next one here. So California Electric, our buddy down there, Gavin Newsom, is really just. He’s entertainment. California electric truck mandate reduces transportation productivity and has other challenges. Unbelievable. You can’t buy this. There are six bullet points. And I only want to cover a couple of electric trucks. Cost 50% more than diesel trucks. But I have lower fuel costs in California, where diesel cost and taxes are among the highest in the nation. Here’s where this is a total misnomer on this one. Electricity in California is twice as high as it is in Texas. Then you have the amount of time. And where are you going to charge this thing? Uh, that is a false statement. Large trucking companies can afford the large investments, but they only make up 30% of all the trucking in California. So I can understand the electrical issue in that city, in a downtown city, trying to cut your smog in a city. I think electric has got a place there. I don’t I don’t want to go ahead and just say, hey, let’s rule them all down. But, uh, the port of area as an opportunity, the electric trucks on the market can travel from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There are 30,000 trucks registered with the port that could all be turned into an electric fleet. The grid in that area, Michael, would not be able to sustain the amount of generation that it would take. The numbers are not there. [00:08:32][132.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:34] Yeah. And what really this, this this doesn’t impact who you think about. This impacts long haul trucking. What it really impacts is the USPS Fedex UPS Amazon. That’s where it’s going to get hurt now in Amazon UPS Fedex afford that. Yeah the USPS well they’re already in debt. And guess who funds that. You. [00:08:54][19.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:55] And guess who gets it in the drive thrus. The consumers when Amazon starts you know that free shipping that you enjoy and you see those delivery trucks come up. [00:09:04][9.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:05] Um, yes. Exactly. The money is going somewhere. And whether or not you see it as a consumer with higher prices or, you know, however, however it works. So, you know, as always, you know, our favorite state, California know we never see it in the Drive-Thru. [00:09:20][15.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:21] Yeah. The second favorite state is, uh, New York. You gotta you can’t buy this kind of entertainment, dude. Okay, let’s go to, uh. You want to. Let’s cover the southwestern Chesapeake, uh, near the 17 and year section. How’s that sound? [00:09:34][12.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:34] Yeah, we’ll do that. [00:09:35][0.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:35] All right. After you did. [00:09:37][1.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:37] Well, we’ll go ahead and quickly cover. Um, before we get into that southwestern deal, I think it’s important to cover oil and natural gas prices. We did see overall indexes on Friday rise about 2/10 of a percentage point after really what was a week of of losing. We saw three straight days Monday through Wednesday. Um, to kind of start off the week which which really dragged markets down. Nasdaq tumbled uh, mostly throughout the week, but did see about a 10th of a percentage point increase. We did see the the dollar index stay fairly flat. Ten year yields uh, jumped uh jumped 1.2 percentage points as 30 year interest rate um declined Bitcoin still sitting at about a. 43 $44,000. Gold crossing all time highs just above $2,000. I’m at 2049. We did see crude oil rally on Friday. Very hard. Finishes up $2. Or excuse me. Finishes up $1.62. That’s 2.2 percentage points. Um, 7381. Looks to open somewhere up here shortly as we record this on Sunday afternoon. It will open shortly. Somewhere around 7395. That seems to be the opening spot price for the futures market on Brant Crude Oil, only up about 2/10 of a percent or 2/10 of a percentage point. Uh, 7940. It’s really interesting. You see, crude oil in the United States spike tremendously. Um, but you see, Brant, crude oil doesn’t spike that much. What does that mean? Well, it probably has a little bit to do with with this Iranian Chinese oil trade in the fact of if China’s going to stop buying Iranian crude due to the discounts they’re unable to receive. It could lead way for other OPEC members to fill that gap. And remember that Brant oil prices really what uh, OPEC and OPEC plus itself is trying to control. So as we close that spread between crude oil and and Brant it’s only going to be more interesting. Um well you know, as we know next next month, Stu, um, coming up here, I think at the end of January, we do have another OPEC, uh, meeting, which they’ll talk about more cuts. I mean, I’d be shocked at this point if we don’t see another attempted small cut. Maybe it’s just a signal to the marketplace to say, hey, we’re here to continue to support prices or whether or not they actually feel like they need to continue to cut. And we know that there’s rumblings that people aren’t happy with the cuts. We know, is it? Uh, we’ve had two we’ve seen two countries recently attempt to pull out of OPEC, if only because they are unhappy with those cuts. Now remember who controls OPEC Saudi in the UAE. They’re the two biggest players OPEC Russia. If you consider Russia if you consider OPEC plus. But speaking of OPEC, those two countries really set the standard for everything they can afford to cut. Everybody else can. It’s why you see Saudi come in and you know last September have the little sugar on top with the extra cuts because they’re the ones that can absorb it harder for other countries to do that. Um. [00:12:21][163.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:22] And so I think let me just add this real quick. Your new member, Brazil, who just joined BRICs plus, uh, said, oh, by the way, we’re joining, but we don’t give a rat’s, uh, Bahamas, uh, about the, uh, quotas. So they said in the head of Brazil’s oil company, Petrobras, basically said we’re producing everything. [00:12:42][20.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:44] So and I mean, that’s good for you, the consumer. So just for all intents and purposes, that’s great for you, the consumer, because that’s going to lower prices for you at the pump. Um, specifically natural gas. We saw a very nice rise over the week. We saw it, uh, close at $2.90. That is awesome. From, uh, from a natural gas standpoint, in terms of producers, um, you know, a lot of that, uh, East Texas natural gas production, uh, some of that Haynesville, uh, production starts becoming a lot more economical as we start pushing $3. A lot of this uprising is, again, just due to the cooler weathers as we move into the winter season. Um, we also did see rig counts drops. Do. Let me go ahead and pull that up here. Um. Rig counts. We dropped one rig week over week. Uh, current count down to 200 or 621. That’s down 151 from last January 2022. So, you know, Canada saw an increase of 39 rigs. Internationally we saw a drop of 23. So a net positive increase on rigs, if only because Canada keeps drilling. Hey, if there’s one thing Canada is doing right, Stu, they’re picking up rigs when they need it too. So we like to see that internationally. We’re up 55 rigs from where we were in December of 2022. So gonna be interesting to see what happens here. So it’s going to be uh, it’s going to be a long year. I think there’s two deals I want to cover. Stu. First off, um, we did see an actual M&A deal. Apache wires, Callon petroleum in an all stock transaction. Just to kind of read, you guys, the high levels here, this transaction was an all stock transaction in which Apache acquired count for approximately $4.5 billion, which is inclusive of Kalin’s net debt. Uh, this pure this new, pure play, um, Permian company has large amounts of inventory, specifically in the Delaware and Midland Basin. Um, I love one of the key highlights, too. Uh, they’re calling their new acreage oil prone. They say Apache’s oil prone acreage in Midland and Delaware Basin combined will increase by more than 50% following the transaction. For Apache’s hope, I really hope it is oil thrown. [00:14:49][125.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:49] Back at the, uh, hat tip to that I our guy of the week oil pro I oh prone. I’ve never heard that. [00:14:58][8.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:59] But for their sake, I hope so. [00:15:00][1.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:00] Oh, absolutely. [00:15:01][0.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:02] Estimated overhead. You know, I unfortunately fourth, uh, fourth bullet point, estimated overhead, operational cost of capital synergies to exceed $150 million annually or. Pour a little out and have a quick moment of silence for all the employees who will be involved in that. Wow. Okay. And unfortunately, that. And then I love this. Uh, you know, one of their other, uh, uh, bullet points. Additional scale anticipated to improve credit file. Pro forma balance sheet will remain strong with a leverage of 1.1 net debt to adjusted EBITDA. And remember, guys, that is just a completely made up metric that’s non-GAAP. So just I just love how they got to show that really. You know, if you if you do some fancy science with our net with our debt and call it net and you do some weird stuff with our balance sheet and only, you know, if you watch our deal spotlights, you kind of see how we can get to an EBITDA number multiple different ways, you know, what do you leave out? What do you not leave out? Um, but don’t worry, they’re in good shape, guys. According to their non-GAAP financials. [00:16:00][58.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:01] Hey, Michael, do you know, how do you really bury money in a financial statement from an oil company. Uh, you use EBITDA after exploration? [00:16:10][8.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:12] Yeah, exactly. Because you don’t include. Yeah. Great. So we’ve got we’ve got revenue of $10 million a year. Oh that’s cool. How much do you spend? Well, we spent $200 million. Yeah. It was like oh, oh, oh. [00:16:24][12.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:25] And we got we have 15 dry wells. [00:16:27][2.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:28] Exactly. It took us 15 dry holes to get here. Uh, yeah. I’ve never seen that still. Come on. [00:16:33][5.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:33] Oh, no. No, but that’s EBITDA. [00:16:35][1.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:36] That’s EBITDA. Speaking of dry holes, let’s move over to the next, um, proposed merger. Southwestern Chesapeake near $17 billion merger. I think, you know, just to give you guys an idea, this deal is roughly, uh, valued at $17 billion. This merger of equals, it would create one of the largest natural gas producers in the United States. That deal could come together as early as next week, according to people familiar with the situation. This is according again to our friends over at router’s. Southwestern had a market capitalization on Friday of roughly about $7 billion. Chesapeake was a little bit more than $10 billion. Um, southwestern stock rose about 7%. Chesapeake um, shares rose nearly three percentage points. You know, this would be about seven point 4,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas per day. This would basically, uh, leapfrog effect, making it probably the largest natural gas producer in the United States. You know, they their existing positions, both in the Haynesville and Louisiana, would allow it to kind of refocus on some liquefied natural gas, uh, exports on the Gulf Coast. Uh, you have to remember, guys, um, you know, Chesapeake was founded by Aubrey McLennan. You know, if you talk about spending money back, I love to spend money. Um, you know, millions of, uh, millions of acres across the country, you know, laden it with probably the most insane debt structure of all time. That finally led to the thing being, uh, filing for bankruptcy. Uh, in 2022, they were able to reduce their debt by more than $7 billion through that process and prioritize, quote unquote, returning cash, um, to shareholders through a bunch of divestitures and exiting its Haynesville position, which is down there in Louisiana, East Texas area. They also sold a bunch of oil assets in Texas. They bought a bunch of other stuff. One of the matter is, guys, they’ve been tinkering. Uh, they needed to do something. They’ve got an insane amount of debt load. Can we go ahead and throw this tweet up? This is from WTI. Realist. Um, it’s I think it says all you need to know about what this, uh, merger would look like. Staggering a pro forma Chesapeake would be at 2 billion or 2 million cubic or boe per day and still almost worthless. Uh, that goes to show you the you know, of course it’s a pro. We’re talking a boe. So what’s that? You know, to be about 7.4 BCF per day? Being natural gas business is hard. You gotta love to see these, uh, natural gas prices go above $3. That does make everything a lot more profitable. But, um, you know, this is a merger of equals. The interesting to see what happens to the names. Um, I saw a few tweets go out there about, you know, can’t really get can you really get rid of the Chesapeake name? It’s just so it’s just so legendary in the industry’s thinking about, you know, all of the history behind it. Southwestern has been around for a while, but I’m just gonna have to come up with a with a new, new name or something because, you know, I don’t, you know, or, you know, because this is definitely a merger. It’s going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out southwestern with, uh, a lot less than Chesapeake, but Chesapeake with a larger market cap. So I wonder what the concession will be. [00:19:43][186.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:43] This be like Hollywood dating? So it’d be South Cheek or oh, West West. Eek. Uh, West check. [00:19:51][8.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:52] Uh, my guess is they keep the Chesapeake name, but in in in I would think they would keep the Chesapeake name, but there’s going to be not a lot of concessions, but southwestern if you’re if you’re a shareholder, if you’re on that management team, you’re, you’re you’re coming in saying we’re equals here. And, you know, but I do think that my guess would be they keep the the Chesapeake name. We’re definitely going to. Cover. Apache. Callin on the deal. Spotlight. If this merger comes through with Southwestern and Chesapeake, we will definitely make sure to cover that as well. So this gives us two great deals, um, to outline. But what do we miss do? [00:20:24][32.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:25] Well, we’re going to, uh, this morning, uh, you’ll be able to go out to the deal spotlight. We’ve got the other one that we’re just released, uh, on Sunday. So, uh, that’ll be pretty groovy to go through. I’m having a lot of fun with these deal, uh, spotlights and, uh, really getting excited to see more of these. We got fantastic feedback on, though, so far. Michael. [00:20:45][20.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:46] Yeah, I know this is this is, uh, a minerals deal in 30 minutes or less. [00:20:49][3.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:50] Um. [00:20:50][0.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:51] That’s that’s the the brand on this one. But it’ll be good. We, we, we love our friends over and and well database combo curve and energy net. We got to include them um, in this next episode. Uh, as, as we checked out one of their lots. Um, as always, you can check out all of the information for the deal spotlight on the greatest website in the world. Energy news b.com. We don’t got anything else, do we? Let them go. [00:21:13][22.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:14] Absolutely. It’s going to be a interesting week. We got some series coming up that are just hold your breath. [00:21:21][7.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:22] Absolutely guys. All right. For Stuart Turley I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow folks. [00:21:22][0.0][1240.2]

The post Daily Energy Standup Episode #280 – Energy Buzz: Mergers, Mandates, and Market Dynamics appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Defying earlier expectations of slowing growth, U.S. crude oil production has surged this year to extend America’s lead at the top of the ranking of the world’s biggest oil producers.

In September, U.S. oil output surged to a record high for any month in history, and forecasts are that production will continue to increase.

U.S. oil producers are set to lower their 2024 spending by 1%, with private drillers cutting budgets by an average of 4%, per a spending survey by Barclays cited by Bloomberg.

The post These Were The Top 5 Oil Producers Of 2023 appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat
European Union regulations obligated banks to increase loans and bonds for environmentally friendly industries, leading to a boost in green financing.
Banks like Credit Agricole are voluntarily shifting away from financing oil and gas projects, aligning with sustainable investment trends.
The U.S. is experiencing slower sustainable financing growth due to political resistance, with institutions like BlackRock and Bank of America managing substantial investments in both oil and green sectors.

The world’s largest banks made $3 billion in profits from bond underwriting and loan provisions in the “environmentally friendly” category last year.

That amount compared with the $2.7 billion that banks made from bonds and loans provided to the oil industry. Some would hail this as an achievement for transition-focused industries. But is it?

To begin with, as Bloomberg points out in the article containing the loan profit data, one reason for the increase in transition financing was stricter EU regulation. With that regulation, the European Union essentially obliged banks to give more loans and underwrite more bonds for companies in, for example, the wind and solar energy sectors.

In other words, it was not fully by these banks’ own choice that they provided more loans and underwrote more bonds for the industries classified as environmentally responsible. It was by a Brussels mandate.

This is not to say that the development was entirely involuntary, of course. On the contrary, several banks have pledged to shrink their lending exposure to the oil and gas industry, with French Credit Agricole the latest to declare an end to the financing of new oil and gas projects last December.

Yet the effect of stricter EU regulation should not be underestimated: it puts banks at risk of higher capital requirements and even fines unless they provide more loans to the industries related to the transition and reduce the financing of the oil and gas industry.

In this context, it is hardly a surprise that European banks led the increase in green financing—even though the biggest issuer of such financing was Japan’s MUFG. In contrast, U.S. banks were less inclined to fund projects labeled environmentally friendly.

The reason was mostly political: there has been a backlash against what some states call discriminatory investment policies by some of the world’s largest banks as they try to shun the oil and gas industry in favor of wind, solar, hydrogen, and EVs.

This backlash continues and has already forced some financial industry majors to make declarations that they are not, in fact, against oil and gas. It all began back in 2022 when Texas accused BlackRock and nine European investment mammoths of boycotting the oil and gas industry and threatened to divest its own money from them in response.

The asset manager responded by assuring Texas authorities that it does not boycott oil and gas and is very much in favor of energy investments in the sector. In a letter to the Texas comptroller, BlackRock reported that it has investments of some $310 billion in the oil and gas industry, of which $115 billion is in Texas.

In the United States, then, so-called sustainable financing goes slower in the direction the government wants it to go. But it does go there: Bank of America last year had $32.3 billion in financing exposure to low-carbon energy supply, as Bloomberg reported, while its exposure to oil and gas stood at $32 billion. Wells Fargo, on the other hand, was more than twice as invested in oil and gas than it was in wind, solar, EVs, and hydrogen. Its low-carbon exposure last year was $14.3 billion versus $35.7 billion for oil and gas.

Government policies and regulations, then, are vital for the switch from financing oil and gas, considered an industry with no long-term future, to financing the energy industries that are believed to have that long-term future. But there is another critical factor, too.

Last year, wind and solar companies suffered a massive stock rout. The S&P Clean Energy Index dropped by over 20% in two months. The reason behind the rout was the series of interest rate hikes that both the European Central Bank and the Fed implemented over the past two years in a bid to combat inflation. And the reason that wind and solar were more susceptible to the effects of inflation-fighting monetary policy was that they are a lot more dependent on loan financing than oil and gas producers.

“To support rapid growth, you need to keep leveraging the balance sheet or issue equity. In a zero-rate environment, this formula worked. In a higher-rate environment, it falls apart,” David Souccar, portfolio manager at Vontobel Asset Management, explained to the Financial Times.

In other words, low-carbon energy companies are extra vulnerable to higher rate hikes because they lack the resources to weather the effects of such policies. The reason they are so vulnerable is that they simply do not make as much money as the oil and gas industry. The market they operate on is quite different, with set long-term prices for the electricity they produce and equally set subsidies.

Banks, then, made more money from lending to wind and solar—and other industries classified as green—because these industries rely more on loan finance to function and grow. And they also made more money from lending to these industries because many of them were essentially forced to lend more to these industries.

Source: Oilprice.com

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Energy News Beat

PARIS, Jan 7 (Reuters) – France requires more than the six new nuclear plants currently planned and possibly needs to build more than 14 new plants, its energy minister said, just days before a parliamentary debate begins on the issue.

Speaking to weekly newspaper La Tribune Dimanche, Energy Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said it was vital to build more nuclear reactors and increase France’s renewable energy mix to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels to 40% from 60% by 2035.

“We need nuclear power beyond the first six EPRs (European Pressurised Reactors) since the existing (nuclear) park will not be eternal,” Pannier-Runacher said, adding that post-2026 additional needs would be equivalent to 13 gigawatts corresponding to eight EPRs.

President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 placed nuclear power at the heart of his country’s drive for carbon neutrality by 2050, announcing the construction of six new European Pressurised Reactor reactors and studies for a further eight reactors.

The new plants are to be built and operated by state-controlled energy provider EDF with tens of billions of euros in public financing mobilized to finance the projects and safeguard EDF’s finances.

The new energy strategy must be codified into law and is set to be debated in parliament from late January.

Pannier-Runacher said going beyond 14 EPRs would be a “good subject for discussion with lawmakers”, while repeating that renewable energy capacity also needed to be ramped up massively.

Macron’s decision to extend the lifespan of existing nuclear plants to more than 50 years from 40 years for certain reactors marked a U-turn on an earlier pledge to close more than a dozen of EDF’s 56 reactors by 2035.

He has also promised to accelerate the development of solar and offshore wind power.

Source: Reuters.com

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