You are correct spec. Bumping up against that ‘100 percent of the time’ average. Your ability to see all the moving parts and understand how they come into play makes reading your posts a delight. I especially enjoy when you share real life industry examples that are applicable to Gulfslope Energy, the current domestic environment, and the markets, so please keep doing that.
I do find RealClearEnergy consistently has informative articles about the state of the energy markets and how they got to be that way.
Here is an article that continues in that tradition. It is a comprehensive study on why things are, how they got to be, who did it, and why they did it.
It is long, so it is not post material. Not light reading, but if you have an interest, or an investment, in energy, it could be useful in sorting out the smoke and spin. See link:
Warning: May Cause Drowsiness. Do Not Operate Heavy Equipment While Reading This Link.
A few excerpts from the article:
This “energy crisis was not sparked by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies or by Iranian ayatollahs. It was self-inflicted, a foreseeable outcome of policy choices made by the West: Germany’s disastrous Energiewende that empowered Vladimir Putin to launch an energy war against Europe; Britain’s self-regarding and self-destructive policy of “powering past coal” and its decision to ban fracking; and, the ‘current administration’s’ war on the American oil and gas industry.”
“….Domestic oil refinery capacity shortages are due to refinery closures, elevated oil prices, ESG policies aimed at reducing GHG emissions, Biofuels, ect.”
“Biofuels happen to have a net replacement ratio of less than 10 percent of conventional fuels…. They merely impose needless regulatory cost and trade at a market-clearing price indexed to the global price of crude oil. In fact, U.S. Department of Energy data show that, on an “energy-equivalent basis,” an 85 percent blend of ethanol with 15 percent gasoline has always sold at an on-highway premium to straight gasoline. Biofuels provide no protection against the volatility of crude oil prices.”
“….Even more humiliating for biofuel threshold inflation is the fact that ethanol from corn, which accounts for more than 87 percent of all biofuel production by volume, produces no GHG emissions improvement over gasoline and may actually cause as much as a 24 percent increase. That finding comes from a 2022 study published by the National Academy of Sciences. Researcher Holly Gibbs and her team found that biofuels had caused a 30 percent increase in corn prices between 2008 and 2016, which induced farmers to plow up vast expanses of grassland and increased the use of fertilizers by 3 - 8 percent. Products made from corn are found on 75 percent of the aisles in a typical grocery store. Thus, higher corn prices boost food prices throughout the entire store.”
“EVs…. the economic effect of this plan will be to degrade GDP growth as massive expenditures that could otherwise be used to finance improvements in societal well-being will be siphoned off to create a vehicle refueling infrastructure that is less efficient, more resource-intensive, less utilized, and more time-consuming for motorists than the one that already exists. The massive flood of expenditure will be used to create a network that adds nothing to net societal welfare and will likely subtract from it.”
“EV purchases are unlikely to generate any net economic growth because they merely substitute for conventional models. Anecdotal evidence thus far suggests that these EV purchases may actually degrade economic performance with their higher price tags, which will shrink demand for new autos and therefore auto production. Also, their higher percentage of foreign content will worsen GDP growth along with the balance of trade and current account deficits. China controls 70 percent of global EV battery production while the U.S. controls less than 10 percent. All the nickel, cobalt, and lithium used to produce EV batteries is sourced from outside the U.S.”
“….paring back the supply of CO2-emitting fossil fuel output today, decades before the multi-exajoule-producing low-carbon infrastructure is in place, which will presumably act as a substitute. They have driven us into “the energy transition’s looming valley of death” without a compass, a map, or any idea of how to escape.”
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