Tag Archives: energy

Achieving Energy Security

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm thinks it would be good for our energy security were we to eliminate the 60% of our oil-centered energy that we import and switching over to 100% clean electricity by 2035.

It’s true that wiping out that 60% of our oil imports would help our energy security, but only if it’s done right. We shouldn’t be importing any energy, much less from enemy nations or from nations vulnerable to enemy nations. The right way to eliminate those imports is to release our own oil—and natural gas and coal, come to that—producers to produce from our own, domestic, hydrocarbon-based sources. It’s highly important, too, to get the regulators out of the way of our producers’ ability to produce nuclear power. Sadly, though, Granholm—Energy Secretary Granholm, mind you—seems unable even to say the words “nuclear power,” or at least she never does say them.

The problem with Granholm’s wish to supplant those imports with 100% clean electricity—as even Granholm knows full well—is that the raw materials needed for “renewable,” or “green,” or “clean” energy production come from Peoples Republic of China mines, or PRC-controlled mines in Africa and Siberia (the latter are not yet developed, but they will be). Beyond that, far too many components for “renewable” energy production come from PRC-domiciled factories. Granholm’s move in no way reduces our dependence on enemy nations for our energy.

It is, however, a distinct elimination of our ability to have energy security.

Buy These Backup Electric Power Stations

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California is moving against the fossil-fuel energy generation industry, along with making its gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles meet ever more extreme mileage and emission criteria in the State government’s effort to run ICE vehicles off the road and…encourage…Californians to buy battery-powered cars and trucks.

Now California’s captive, if not outright State-owned, utility PG&E is proposing a new electricity feed into its greed to supplement its wind and solar generated electricity.

Using electric cars to charge the power grid.
PG&E…sees “great potential” for EVs to act as power grid backup generators. “The grid needs those electric vehicles. We need to make it available, and it can be a huge resource[.]”

And

PG&E believes in a future where everyone is driving an electric vehicle (EV) and where that EV serves as a backup power option at home and more broadly as a resource for the grid[.]

And especially,

The company also said tapping electric cars eliminates “the need for non-renewable resources” like fossil fuels.

Is this the reason California’s governing politicians are pushing so hard for—almost to the point of requiring—Californians to buy all-electric vehicles? Those vehicles are, in fact, intended to be used as distributed power (re)generating stations?

A Bogus Beef is Swatted

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When Congress passed and President Joe Biden (D) signed the recent debt ceiling bill, one of the items included was a requirement for construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline to proceed to completion and for the pipeline to begin operation. In conjunction with that, the bill removed from lower courts their jurisdiction over questions  regarding the natural gas pipeline.

The Fourth Circuit, when “environmentalists” got their cases to it, blocked construction while it sorted out whether it could rule on the matter.

The Supreme Court has sorted the matter out for the Fourth Circuit, at least temporarily: the pipeline will be completed with no further delay; the Court has lifted the Circuit’s stay.

The “environmentalists'” beef was this, as paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal:

stopping legal challenges before the Fourth Circuit violated the separation of powers clause of the Constitution, in effect giving Congress the power to decide the outcome of judicial proceedings.

This would be risible, were it not so cynical. No judicial proceeding is being predetermined by Congress. What has been specified, as allowed under our Constitution, is the jurisdiction of courts below the Supreme Court; in this case, that lower courts do not have jurisdiction to hear cases involving the MVP. Nor have the courts as a whole been denied jurisdiction; such cases still can come before the Supreme Court, should that Court choose to hear them.

BLM and Fairness to the Taxpayer

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The Bureau of Land Management is moving finalize its two-yr-old effort to increase the minimum price oil and gas developers must pay to lease Federal land for oil and gas development by five times: from $2 per acre to $10 per acre. BLM also wants to increase the minimum bond those developers must pay from $10,000 to $150,000.

Those increases, on their faces, look like chump change, but those minima are for miniscule fields that are far too small even to think about drilling an exploratory well. Also included in the BLM’s move are these cost increases and production limitations:

  • reduce the primary term for new onshore leases from 10 years to five years, even though a significant percentage of leases require more than five years to start producing. For example, recent data shows that 37% of leases in New Mexico started production more than five years after authorization.
  • raise annual rental rates to $3/acre for the first two years, and then $5/acre, increasing costs by at least $123 million per year.
  • eliminate authority to grant royalty relief in difficult times or national emergency.
  • raise the minimum inspection fees each operator will pay annually to anywhere from $800-$11,300 per lease, varying by lease.

And this:

  • impose a new $10,000/mile annual fee for water depths greater than 500 feet; and $1,000/mile for water depths less than 500 feet. There are approximately 26,000 miles of pipelines in the offshore with about 12,600 miles in waters less than 400 feet and 13,700 miles in waters greater than 400 feet. Increased annual costs would total about $149 million.

The BLM claims that these increases aim[] to ensure fairness to the taxpayer.

That’s silly.

What would be fair to us taxpayers, and especially to those of us ordinary Americans on the bottom rungs of our economy who pay little or no taxes, would be to not do those increases—none of us will see a cent of those cost increases. We will, though, pay even more for our energy—home heating and cooling, fuel for our cars and for the shippers’ trucks. No, the money from those increases will go to the Biden administration’s special interests.

Not Successful?

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The Wall Street Journal thinks so regarding Texas border security. Here’s their headline and subheadline from last Friday:

Texas Spent Billions on Border Security. It’s Not Working.
Operation Lone Star, with $4.5 billion spent so far, has had little effect on migration while facing charges of civil-rights abuses

And this, in Findell’s third paragraph:

The program is an explicit challenge to the national government, which by law controls international borders and immigration enforcement.

The rest of her piece follows closely on her headline while largely ignoring that key datum in her third paragraph.

On the other hand, there are some actual facts regarding Texas’ Operation Lone Star:

Since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the multi-agency effort has led to over 394,200 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 31,300 criminal arrests, with more than 29,100 felony charges reported. In the fight against fentanyl, Texas law enforcement has seized over 422 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this border mission.

That sounds pretty successful to this poor, dumb Texan. That’s also despite the national government’s—President Joe Biden’s (D) administration’s—conscious decision to not control our southern border, to instead allow record millions of illegal aliens to flood across that border.

The idea that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) administration faces civil-rights charges is literally, narrowly true. The cases brought, though, are risible. There’s nothing at all abusive about transporting illegal aliens—who volunteer for the trip—to loudly avowedly sanctuary cities where, by those cities’ proclamations, all illegal aliens are welcome. (Progressive-Democratic Party mayors, like New York City’s Eric Adams, now are whining about having the influx of illegals into their cities, but those plaints are just that—empty whining. Were Adams, et al., actually serious about no longer wanting the illegals, he and his cohorts would cancel the sanctuary status of their cities.)