Sunday, May 12, 2024 10:15:55 AM
Washington Update From the US Oil & Gas Association - 5.12.2024
David Blackmon
May 12, 2024
Shocked. Shocked to Find Lobbying Going on Here
May 10, 2024
Gasp! The Oil and Gas Industry Has Been Lobbying the potential Trump Administration
Shocking news from a publication focused on politics—the oil industry is lobbying a potential Trump administration. That’s the gist of a recent article from Politico. Politico writes:
The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.
We can’t believe we need to say this, but that’s how good lobbying works. Apparently, it’s a secret that Politico’s reporters have uncovered that good industry lobbyists give elected officials as much as information as possible and provide information with specificity. That’s the job of lobbyists—to provide information that helps the elected officials make good decisions. It’s really that simple.
Politico thinks it’s a bit “gross” for the oil industry to draft potential executive orders for a Trump administration despite the fact that Democratic constituencies obviously did the same thing before Biden was elected. On Day 1 of the Biden administration, President Biden issued 9 executive orders and then issued 8 additional executive orders the next day. With so many executive orders issued so quickly, you can safely bet that many of these executive orders were drafted by outside groups before President Biden was elected.
Here's one more thing that Politico does not understand—besides the oil and gas industry, other groups are drafting potential executive orders for Trump, if he is elected. It is no secret that conservative groups are working to produce potential executive orders on a wide range of topics.
If Trump is elected, the Trump transition team will meet with conservative groups and the transition team will review potential executive orders. From November until January, they will put together executive orders and other policies to hit the ground running on Day 1. The Biden Administration did this. All Administrations do this. A Trump administration will do the same thing.
Elections matters—Sen. Sherrod Brown edition
Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is up for reelection this November and is in a tight race. As a result, he is suddenly a moderate again. He has signed on to Senator Manchin’s Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn Biden’s EV tax credits because they are too lenient on China.
Senator Brown and Senator Manchin voted for these credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. They should have ensured the law was well-written in the first place, but they didn’t do that and now they are complaining that their own Administration isn’t interpreting the law correctly. Senator Brown and Manchin were critical votes for Biden when Biden needed them when the bill passed on a party-line vote. Now they are acting like moderates. But now, Senator Brown knows he must be much more moderate if he wants to get reelected in Ohio.
Senators Manchin and Brown backtracking on these EV tax credits is one more example of why elections are good—they force lawmakers to consider what their constituents want.
Registered voters don’t like requiring automakers to sell more EVs
The Liberal Patriot is a center-left publication focused on American politics. One of the central concerns of the people who run The Liberal Patriot is that the Democratic party has moved too far to the left. Their latest polling has more examples of how out of touch Biden’s signature policies are with Independents.
One of Biden’s most important policies—one that he was touting a couple of weeks ago--was new regulations from EPA that will require car companies to sell ever-increasing numbers of EVs. The Independents and Republicans don’t like the plan. The Liberal Patriot explains:
The Biden administration’s proposed tailpipe regulations that would “require auto companies to sell more electric vehicles after 2030” is one of the worst performing ideas in the entire poll—opposed by a nine-point net margin among all voters. But the partisan divide on EVs is stark: Democrats support the idea of requiring more electric vehicle sales by a 40-point net margin while Republicans oppose it by a 57-point net margin with independents also opposed by a 22-point net margin.
I’m always heartened to see poll results like this. It’s good to see reasonable opinions from Independents.
Voters doubt Biden’s signature legislative achievements are working
Politico reports:
Voters say they don’t know very much about President Joe Biden’s major domestic spending initiatives. They don’t think they’re working. And they don’t give him credit for their benefits, anyway.
Those are among the key takeaways from a new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll about four major laws passed in the first two years of Biden’s administration — and the impact that spending has had on voters and the communities around them.
It is amusing the President used all his political capital to pass laws that normal people don’t care about.
Governor Hair Gel is coming for your car
This headline from E&E News is too good—"Gavin Newsom is coming for your car, and he wants you to know it.” It’s perfect because Newsom is pandering to the far-left and alienating Independents. It might be helpful for fundraising purposes from the far left but will make it nearly impossible to move to the center for which we are grateful for.
AI and the coming collision with EPA
For the first time in over a decade, electricity demand is increasing in the United States. This is obviously good news for natural gas. Not only is natural gas the biggest sources of electricity generation, but its growth over the past 10 years has outpaced all other sources of generation. Over the past 10 years, electricity generation from natural gas grew 70% more than the growth in generation from wind and solar. Wind and solar get the headlines, but natural gas keeps the lights on.
The challenge for natural gas is that EPA recently released new regulations on carbon dioxide emission that require CCS on new natural gas plants. The EPA regulations will kill coal, reduce the current fleet of electricity generators, and make it impossible to build new reliable power plants. EPA’s latest regulations cannot be allowed to stand if the United States wants to keep electricity rates somewhat affordable and if we want to compete globally for the rollout of AI.
For more than 50 years after World War II, electricity demand steadily increased in the United States. But starting in the mid-2000s, electricity demand leveled off and hasn’t really grown since. There were two major factors in that contributed to this leveling off—improved energy efficiency and the continued loss of energy-intensive manufacturing. Tech companies that helped grow the economy like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, used less electricity than aluminum smelters and other large industrial uses of electricity, but with the continued growth of data center, especially for AI, these tech companies are now starting to drive growth in electricity consumption.
The WSJ reports that:
Dominion Energy, which supplies electricity to most of the data centers in Virginia, expects their power use to quadruple over the next 15 years, representing 40% of the utility’s demand in the state.
Utilities in Georgia and North Carolina are adding fossil-fuel power or considering delaying the shutdown of coal-fired plants to meet the demands of data centers and other industries. Duke Energy told regulators it needs three new gas-fired power plants in the Carolinas. Otherwise, it says it will have to keep coal plants open.
Dominion Chief Executive Robert Blue said the utility expects its peak load to increase at least 5% each year for the next 15 years. “We’re going to continue to be a big builder of renewables. We’re building a big offshore wind farm. We’re building a lot of solar. We’re adding a lot of storage,” Blue said. “But we also recognize that we’re going to need some more natural gas in order to keep the lights on.”
To reiterate, Dominion Energy expects data centers alone to represent 40% of Dominion’s load in 15 years. One reason the demand is so great is that Northern Virginia, especially the area near Dulles Airport is the data center capital of the world.
The headline of the WSJ explains the left-wing concern with data centers. The article is titled "How Big Data Centers Are Slowing the Shift to Clean Energy.” The point is that natural gas and coal-fired power plants are necessary to keep the power flowing to data centers. Data centers need electricity 24/7/365 and it is incredibly difficult to power data centers with weather-dependent wind and solar, no matter how aggressive the tech companies' sustainability goals are.
While it will be hard to meet data center demand, Biden’s EPA is making it even harder. As noted above, last week Biden’s EPA released new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions that require CCS on all coal plants and new natural gas plants. EPA is trying to close all coal plants and make it impossible to build new natural gas plants, just as electricity demand is starting to increase.
If continued leadership in artificial intelligence matters, we need to stop EPA’s assault on reliable, affordable energy. Affordable electricity is critical for the welfare of American families and American industries today and in the future.
Why can't you power data centers with wind—some years the wind doesn't blow very much
This chart below from the U.S. Energy Information Administration is kind of amazing. Wind generation fell in 2023 compared to 2022. This is despite continued growth in wind installations. The most important factor is that 2023 wasn't a big wind year, while 2022 was a big wind year. Not only does wind vary from hour to hour, day to day, month to month, season to season, but also year to year. Here's EIA explaining what is happening with wind generation in the United States:
U.S. wind capacity increased steadily over the last several years, more than tripling from 47.0 GW in 2010 to 147.5 GW at the end of 2023. Electricity generation from wind turbines also grew steadily, at a similar rate to capacity, until 2023. Last year, the average utilization rate, or capacity factor, of the wind turbine fleet fell to an eight-year low of 33.5% (compared with 35.9% in 2022, the all-time high).
The 2023 decline in wind generation indicates that wind as a generation source is maturing after decades of rapid growth. Slower wind speeds than normal affected wind generation in 2023, especially during the first half of the year when wind generation dropped by 14% compared with the same period in 2022. Wind speeds increased later in 2023, and wind generation from August through December was 2.4% higher than during the same period in 2022. Wind speeds had been stronger than normal during 2022.
How are you going to power your data centers on wind power?
Biden’s plans to electrify trucking face harsh reality in the desert
A few weeks ago, the Biden administration finalized rules that would require semi-trucks to switch from diesel to batteries or to hydrogen-fuel cells even though neither is ready to replace diesel. E&E News explains the challenge of charging electric semi-trucks:
But creating a corridor for green trucking is easier said than done.
A single charging plaza may need as much power as the Empire State Building, according to TeraWatt. Adding to the challenge is the limited range of today’s electric trucks, which means a string of charging stations are necessary to keep them running.
Then there’s the landscape itself. Much of the southwestern United States is remote desert — making it difficult to connect power-hungry charging stations to the grid.
A serious problem is getting enough electricity to the middle of nowhere to charge large trucks. That is expensive and difficult to get the necessary permits for new power lines, as well as new, large transformers.
The challenges of trying to electrify trucking is much more difficult than the Biden administration seems to believe. They do not understand what is required to get enough electricity to where it needs to go. They seem to think all you need to do is flip a switch and electricity magically appears.
Electric charging faces harsh really at Tesla
I can’t say that I understand this move by Elon Musk, but he laid off the entire Supercharger team. Tesla’s Supercharger network has been one of the biggest perks of driving a Tesla. Just last year, several automakers did deals with Tesla to get access to Tesla’s Supercharging network and now Tesla has laid off its Supercharger team.
Whatever this means for Tesla, it is not bullish for EV adoption.
https://blackmon.substack.com/p/washington-update-from-the-us-oil-357?publication_id=712558&post_id=144552853&isFreemail=false&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true
David Blackmon
May 12, 2024
Shocked. Shocked to Find Lobbying Going on Here
May 10, 2024
Gasp! The Oil and Gas Industry Has Been Lobbying the potential Trump Administration
Shocking news from a publication focused on politics—the oil industry is lobbying a potential Trump administration. That’s the gist of a recent article from Politico. Politico writes:
The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.
We can’t believe we need to say this, but that’s how good lobbying works. Apparently, it’s a secret that Politico’s reporters have uncovered that good industry lobbyists give elected officials as much as information as possible and provide information with specificity. That’s the job of lobbyists—to provide information that helps the elected officials make good decisions. It’s really that simple.
Politico thinks it’s a bit “gross” for the oil industry to draft potential executive orders for a Trump administration despite the fact that Democratic constituencies obviously did the same thing before Biden was elected. On Day 1 of the Biden administration, President Biden issued 9 executive orders and then issued 8 additional executive orders the next day. With so many executive orders issued so quickly, you can safely bet that many of these executive orders were drafted by outside groups before President Biden was elected.
Here's one more thing that Politico does not understand—besides the oil and gas industry, other groups are drafting potential executive orders for Trump, if he is elected. It is no secret that conservative groups are working to produce potential executive orders on a wide range of topics.
If Trump is elected, the Trump transition team will meet with conservative groups and the transition team will review potential executive orders. From November until January, they will put together executive orders and other policies to hit the ground running on Day 1. The Biden Administration did this. All Administrations do this. A Trump administration will do the same thing.
Elections matters—Sen. Sherrod Brown edition
Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is up for reelection this November and is in a tight race. As a result, he is suddenly a moderate again. He has signed on to Senator Manchin’s Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn Biden’s EV tax credits because they are too lenient on China.
Senator Brown and Senator Manchin voted for these credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. They should have ensured the law was well-written in the first place, but they didn’t do that and now they are complaining that their own Administration isn’t interpreting the law correctly. Senator Brown and Manchin were critical votes for Biden when Biden needed them when the bill passed on a party-line vote. Now they are acting like moderates. But now, Senator Brown knows he must be much more moderate if he wants to get reelected in Ohio.
Senators Manchin and Brown backtracking on these EV tax credits is one more example of why elections are good—they force lawmakers to consider what their constituents want.
Registered voters don’t like requiring automakers to sell more EVs
The Liberal Patriot is a center-left publication focused on American politics. One of the central concerns of the people who run The Liberal Patriot is that the Democratic party has moved too far to the left. Their latest polling has more examples of how out of touch Biden’s signature policies are with Independents.
One of Biden’s most important policies—one that he was touting a couple of weeks ago--was new regulations from EPA that will require car companies to sell ever-increasing numbers of EVs. The Independents and Republicans don’t like the plan. The Liberal Patriot explains:
The Biden administration’s proposed tailpipe regulations that would “require auto companies to sell more electric vehicles after 2030” is one of the worst performing ideas in the entire poll—opposed by a nine-point net margin among all voters. But the partisan divide on EVs is stark: Democrats support the idea of requiring more electric vehicle sales by a 40-point net margin while Republicans oppose it by a 57-point net margin with independents also opposed by a 22-point net margin.
I’m always heartened to see poll results like this. It’s good to see reasonable opinions from Independents.
Voters doubt Biden’s signature legislative achievements are working
Politico reports:
Voters say they don’t know very much about President Joe Biden’s major domestic spending initiatives. They don’t think they’re working. And they don’t give him credit for their benefits, anyway.
Those are among the key takeaways from a new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll about four major laws passed in the first two years of Biden’s administration — and the impact that spending has had on voters and the communities around them.
It is amusing the President used all his political capital to pass laws that normal people don’t care about.
Governor Hair Gel is coming for your car
This headline from E&E News is too good—"Gavin Newsom is coming for your car, and he wants you to know it.” It’s perfect because Newsom is pandering to the far-left and alienating Independents. It might be helpful for fundraising purposes from the far left but will make it nearly impossible to move to the center for which we are grateful for.
AI and the coming collision with EPA
For the first time in over a decade, electricity demand is increasing in the United States. This is obviously good news for natural gas. Not only is natural gas the biggest sources of electricity generation, but its growth over the past 10 years has outpaced all other sources of generation. Over the past 10 years, electricity generation from natural gas grew 70% more than the growth in generation from wind and solar. Wind and solar get the headlines, but natural gas keeps the lights on.
The challenge for natural gas is that EPA recently released new regulations on carbon dioxide emission that require CCS on new natural gas plants. The EPA regulations will kill coal, reduce the current fleet of electricity generators, and make it impossible to build new reliable power plants. EPA’s latest regulations cannot be allowed to stand if the United States wants to keep electricity rates somewhat affordable and if we want to compete globally for the rollout of AI.
For more than 50 years after World War II, electricity demand steadily increased in the United States. But starting in the mid-2000s, electricity demand leveled off and hasn’t really grown since. There were two major factors in that contributed to this leveling off—improved energy efficiency and the continued loss of energy-intensive manufacturing. Tech companies that helped grow the economy like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, used less electricity than aluminum smelters and other large industrial uses of electricity, but with the continued growth of data center, especially for AI, these tech companies are now starting to drive growth in electricity consumption.
The WSJ reports that:
Dominion Energy, which supplies electricity to most of the data centers in Virginia, expects their power use to quadruple over the next 15 years, representing 40% of the utility’s demand in the state.
Utilities in Georgia and North Carolina are adding fossil-fuel power or considering delaying the shutdown of coal-fired plants to meet the demands of data centers and other industries. Duke Energy told regulators it needs three new gas-fired power plants in the Carolinas. Otherwise, it says it will have to keep coal plants open.
Dominion Chief Executive Robert Blue said the utility expects its peak load to increase at least 5% each year for the next 15 years. “We’re going to continue to be a big builder of renewables. We’re building a big offshore wind farm. We’re building a lot of solar. We’re adding a lot of storage,” Blue said. “But we also recognize that we’re going to need some more natural gas in order to keep the lights on.”
To reiterate, Dominion Energy expects data centers alone to represent 40% of Dominion’s load in 15 years. One reason the demand is so great is that Northern Virginia, especially the area near Dulles Airport is the data center capital of the world.
The headline of the WSJ explains the left-wing concern with data centers. The article is titled "How Big Data Centers Are Slowing the Shift to Clean Energy.” The point is that natural gas and coal-fired power plants are necessary to keep the power flowing to data centers. Data centers need electricity 24/7/365 and it is incredibly difficult to power data centers with weather-dependent wind and solar, no matter how aggressive the tech companies' sustainability goals are.
While it will be hard to meet data center demand, Biden’s EPA is making it even harder. As noted above, last week Biden’s EPA released new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions that require CCS on all coal plants and new natural gas plants. EPA is trying to close all coal plants and make it impossible to build new natural gas plants, just as electricity demand is starting to increase.
If continued leadership in artificial intelligence matters, we need to stop EPA’s assault on reliable, affordable energy. Affordable electricity is critical for the welfare of American families and American industries today and in the future.
Why can't you power data centers with wind—some years the wind doesn't blow very much
This chart below from the U.S. Energy Information Administration is kind of amazing. Wind generation fell in 2023 compared to 2022. This is despite continued growth in wind installations. The most important factor is that 2023 wasn't a big wind year, while 2022 was a big wind year. Not only does wind vary from hour to hour, day to day, month to month, season to season, but also year to year. Here's EIA explaining what is happening with wind generation in the United States:
U.S. wind capacity increased steadily over the last several years, more than tripling from 47.0 GW in 2010 to 147.5 GW at the end of 2023. Electricity generation from wind turbines also grew steadily, at a similar rate to capacity, until 2023. Last year, the average utilization rate, or capacity factor, of the wind turbine fleet fell to an eight-year low of 33.5% (compared with 35.9% in 2022, the all-time high).
The 2023 decline in wind generation indicates that wind as a generation source is maturing after decades of rapid growth. Slower wind speeds than normal affected wind generation in 2023, especially during the first half of the year when wind generation dropped by 14% compared with the same period in 2022. Wind speeds increased later in 2023, and wind generation from August through December was 2.4% higher than during the same period in 2022. Wind speeds had been stronger than normal during 2022.
How are you going to power your data centers on wind power?
Biden’s plans to electrify trucking face harsh reality in the desert
A few weeks ago, the Biden administration finalized rules that would require semi-trucks to switch from diesel to batteries or to hydrogen-fuel cells even though neither is ready to replace diesel. E&E News explains the challenge of charging electric semi-trucks:
But creating a corridor for green trucking is easier said than done.
A single charging plaza may need as much power as the Empire State Building, according to TeraWatt. Adding to the challenge is the limited range of today’s electric trucks, which means a string of charging stations are necessary to keep them running.
Then there’s the landscape itself. Much of the southwestern United States is remote desert — making it difficult to connect power-hungry charging stations to the grid.
A serious problem is getting enough electricity to the middle of nowhere to charge large trucks. That is expensive and difficult to get the necessary permits for new power lines, as well as new, large transformers.
The challenges of trying to electrify trucking is much more difficult than the Biden administration seems to believe. They do not understand what is required to get enough electricity to where it needs to go. They seem to think all you need to do is flip a switch and electricity magically appears.
Electric charging faces harsh really at Tesla
I can’t say that I understand this move by Elon Musk, but he laid off the entire Supercharger team. Tesla’s Supercharger network has been one of the biggest perks of driving a Tesla. Just last year, several automakers did deals with Tesla to get access to Tesla’s Supercharging network and now Tesla has laid off its Supercharger team.
Whatever this means for Tesla, it is not bullish for EV adoption.
https://blackmon.substack.com/p/washington-update-from-the-us-oil-357?publication_id=712558&post_id=144552853&isFreemail=false&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true
What part of "shall not be infringed" is unclear?
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