1. Investor's Business Daily ran an excellent editorial a few days ago on the "shockingly good news" that carbon emissions are now the lowest in 20 years, going all the way back to 1992 (see chart above, EIA data here), here's a slice:
"Carbon emissions in the U.S. have hit a 20-year low due to a
supposedly environmentally unfriendly drilling technique that has
created an abundance of cheap natural gas. The free market, it seems,
does it better than the EPA."
"Environmentalists find themselves between shale rock and a hard place
after a little noticed technical report documented how the natural gas
boom caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has
actually helped the environment in a major way while also creating jobs
and economic growth."
"In the report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the
Energy Department, said that energy-related U.S. CO2 emissions for the
first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. EIA estimates
that full-year emissions will be the lowest since at least 1995. The untold story is that this has been achieved by the free market and private-sector technology, not government mandates."
"How ironic that those greedy energy companies and not
government-backed green energy failures such as Solyndra and the Chevy
Volt are both saving the earth and paving the way to genuine energy
independence. Fracking will save the earth before anything like cap-and-trade or
the Kyoto Protocol — an inconvenient truth indeed for environmentalists."
2. Robert Lenzner at Forbes summarizes the Top Ten Reasons to Love Natural Gas, here's the opening paragraph:
"Here is the most promising development in the American economy. Period!
The discovery of oceans of natural gas in North America means a vastly
cheaper source of energy, the creation of hundreds of thousands of new
jobs, a meaningful reduction in global warming, a much diminished
balance of payments deficit, a far stronger dollar, a jump in the
profits of the electric utilities, who will then raise their cash
dividend payouts, which will benefit widows and orphans as well as giant
pension funds, and cause the gold bugs lasting anguish."
3. the energy platforms of Obama and Romney are different, here's the bottom line:
"In reviewing the energy policy platforms of Romney and Obama, we see
that Obama shows a distinct preference for a command-driven energy
economy, while Romney strongly favors a freer, private-sector energy
economy. Obama places far less emphasis on energy affordability and far
more emphasis on greening the energy supply even though that raises
costs. Finally, whereas Romney clearly has a goal of energy
interdependence with Canada, Obama’s view of energy independence is more
a “go it alone” approach, where pipelines to Canada need not apply."
4. Global oil and gas capital expenditures will break the $1 trillion barrier, according to a new report from natural resources experts Global Data, here's an excerpt:
"Investor confidence in new upstream projects is being driven by the
increasing number of oil and gas discoveries (242 last year alone), combined
with consistently high oil prices and the arrival of new technologies that are
giving the major firms access to deep offshore reserves that were previously
technically and financially unviable."
"North America is expected to witness the highest capex, with $254 billion, or 24.5% of the 2012 global total. Compared to a global average capex
growth rate of 13.4%, North America is expected to see growth of
15.7%. The increase of unconventional oil and gas activities, especially the
continuing exploitation of shale oil and gas sites and the development of
Canadian oil sands, are the major drivers for these investments."
Wow...a trillion dollars...that's a lot of dollars.
ReplyDelete"...The discovery of oceans of natural gas in North America means a vastly cheaper source of energy, the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs, a meaningful reduction in global warming, a much diminished balance of payments deficit, a far stronger dollar, a jump in the profits of the electric utilities, who will then raise their cash dividend payouts, which will benefit widows and orphans as well as giant pension funds, and cause the gold bugs lasting anguish."
ReplyDeleteAmazing how much crap one can fit in a single sentence.
First of all, natural gas is not cheap because it costs more than coal to produce the same amount of energy. What is lost is the fact that shale producers have been willing to keep leases by drilling and selling gas for far less than the total cost of production. But as the hype is getting loudest we see a decline in gas rigs as the companies say 'no mas' and try to reposition themselves as shale liquids players. Lower drilling will mean that once the backlog of wells that need to be fracked is cleared shale production will decline.
Second, there is no global warming problem. If anything the danger comes from cooling as solar activity declines. And changes CO2 levels lag changes in temperature trends. They are the effect, not the cause of temperature trend changes.
Third, utilities would do much better if the renewables mandates were removed and the EPA stopped its war on coal, which is part of the solution that shale gas cannot ever be.
Forth, the gold bugs are doing fine. Gold has gone up every year for the past decade and is in no danger of falling in price as long as central banks keep printing money and governments keep meddling with the economy and increase taxes. Funny how the people who have been trying to talk down gold for years still persist in doing so even though the markets have proven them wrong. But that is what allows some of us to get rich; many people believing in the wrong things and jumping on trends that have already reversed.
Gold has gone up because they are printing money.
DeleteI love those fear mongering gold ads on fox: The price of gold has got up and the buying power of the dollar has gone down.
"Wow...a trillion dollars...that's a lot of dollars."
ReplyDeleteBoy, I'll say. In $1 bills you could fill railroad boxcars until you had a train 1000 miles long.
You could drive that train to DC and empty it in 4 months. What rate of speed is the train going?
ReplyDeleteHydra: I changed the headline to say "C02 Emissions at a 20-year low." The challenge is create a headline that either fills one full line, or two full lines, and I couldn't add "emissions" in the first headline without going over to a third line with one one or two words.
ReplyDeleteBy taking out "Energy Updates" (and moving that to the body of the post), I added "Emissions" to the headline.
"You could drive that train to DC and empty it in 4 months. What rate of speed is the train going?"
ReplyDeleteAbout 1/3 mph. You would empty 30 cars /hr.