Summertime 2011, and “investigative journalist” Lee Fang of ThinkProgress has replaced the BP Spill in my blogging life. Fang’s amateurish attempts to find scandal in oil commodities trading have become my new blog fodder. Fang puts forward the half-baked theory that the evil Koch Brothers and other traders control world oil prices via speculation. His latest piece, “JP Morgan, Koch, Other Oil Traders May Buy | Read More »
It sounded like such a good idea. Back in 2009, NRG Energy Inc. hatched a plan to “go green” using switchgrass and sorghum as boiler fuel supplement. It was hoped that it might replace up to 10% of the coal which fires its Big Cajun II power plant in New Roads, LA. All the elements were in place: land near the plant (up to 30,000 | Read More »
Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA) has led a group of 77 Freshmen Republicans in an effort to block President Obama’s use of the recess appointment for the remainder of 2011. The coalition letter to the House Republican leadership (pdf link) contains this pledge: Rep. Landry’s statement, in part:
You heard it here first. The International Energy Agency, a body whose membership parallels the G-20 and which is dominated by members of the EU, announced that it may consider releasing more oil from “its stockpile” (1.6 billion barrels, nearly half of that in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve) at the end of the current 30-day, 2 million barrels per day period. Repeat of IEA | Read More »
The New York Times really hates natural gas. Just in the last year, the Times has run scaremongering articles on the dangers of hydrofracking and Gasland-inspired tales of groundwater contamination in the “shale plays”, the unconventional sources of natural gas that have redefined domestic gas supply withing the last decade. On Sunday, the paper drifted into unfamiliar and inhospitable territory: petroleum economics. The Times published | Read More »
On Thursday, the Department of Energy announced a release of thirty million barrels of crude oil over the next 60 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation’s stockpile supposedly set aside for emergency supply disruptions. Washington, DC – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency have decided to release a total of 60 | Read More »
The latest dispatch in the New York Times‘ ongoing editorial series “Those Mean and Ignorant Republicans” comes from Bruce Bartlett, who served in the Reagan and Bush I administrations and on the staffs of Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. Bartlett is the kind of faux-GOPer that the Times likes to trot out to skewer Republicans. In this piece, he seems to go out of his | Read More »
While I claim no expertise, I do have a general understanding of how the oil market works, which is more than can be said for ThinkProgress “investigative journalist” Lee Fang. A series of articles (notably here and here) has convinced the so-called Progressive community that Fang has blown the lid off a Koch Brothers conspiracy to control oil markets via speculation. For Mr. Fang, the | Read More »
The speakers for Day 1 of the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans included luminaries such as Mike Huckabee, Michael Williams, and Ted Cruz, along with our own Erick Erickson. I’ll confine my remarks to the presidential candidates. Newt Gingrich Newt has a vision and a plan that appeal to this fiscal conservative. President Gingrich would hit the ground running in his first week with | Read More »
“If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” Judging from his comments regarding ATMs and unemployment, President Obama blames the better mousetrap for 400,000 out-of-work cats. Cats who are starving for the lack of mice. Creative destruction is a necessary and vital feature of a healthy and free capitalist economy. Business people intuitively know and embrace it (or | Read More »
The Daily Show looks at America’s #1 source of imported oil, Canada. Open thread.
ExxonMobil hits large Keathley Canyon discovery (Oil and Gas Journal, June 8, 2011). XOM announces the discovery of 700 million barrels equivalent (BOE) of oil and gas in 7,000 feet of water, 250 miles offshore Louisiana. Shell’s Cardamom to come online (Offshore247.com, June 9, 2011). Shell will bring on 50,000 barrels equivalent per day from its 140 million BOE discovery in 2,700 feet of water | Read More »
Yes, it was an easy quiz. Elementary, even. Yes, several of the questions are hardly “political”. They had to include certain questions (“Mark Zuckerberg”?) so that certain segments of the population would register with a pulse. But the results of our self-selected, non-scientific and adulterated test of the RedState community, is in: of over 1,400 participants, half scored a perfect 11/11 on the quiz. That’s | Read More »
There’s an online quiz at the Pew Research Center’s website: 11 questions to rate your political IQ. The quiz should take just a few minutes to complete. You can take the poll here: http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/ You’re welcome to comment, but please do not discuss specific questions so as not to skew the results. Better yet, use the online poll at my blog to register your score.
Lee Fang’s job title at the Center for American Progress is “Researcher”. Heh. Honestly, I’d never heard of this guy until about a month ago, when he made the mistake of thinking he knew something about oil trading, accusing the Koch Brothers of rigging the markets for easy gains. His evidence was, you know, contango. Koch Brothers. Today Fang attacked the freshman Republican from Arizona’s | Read More »
Left to its own devices, the oil industry is its own worst enemy. Relatively low barriers to entry have made the industry freely competitive. The reward goes to the quickest and the most efficient companies; just like in a Gold Rush, we remember the big winners and quickly forget the also-rans. Since the days of Colonel Drake, Patillo Higgins and Dad Joiner, twas ever thus. | Read More »
Democratic politicians once ruled the energy-producing states, but they are becoming quite a rare breed. Republicans scored strong electoral gains in the Congressional elections of 2010, particularly in Texas. Here in Louisiana, both houses of the state legislature have swung red, by a combination of election and defection; it’s no secret who owns the moratorium and a host of other energy-hostile policy initiatives. Sen. Mary | Read More »
Your President has been telling you things that simply aren’t true. Things like “We can’t drill our way out of our energy problems.” Or “Oil and gas are the fuels of the past.” Or, perhaps worst of all, “The U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s oil, but controls only 2% of the world’s reserves.” Well, that last one may be technically true, but it is | Read More »
This week, the Senate is set to consider the repeal of certain provisions of the tax code as they relate to the oil and gas industry. By styling these tax breaks as “subsidies”, the Administration and other opponents of the industry wrongly equate them with the benefits enjoyed by ethanol, wind and solar energy. But the tax credits for alternative energy production are true subsidies, | Read More »
There was an undeniable uptick in U.S. oil production in 2009 and 2010. But new DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) tried to take credit for it: Like I said, domestic oil production is at its highest point in recent years. So we’ve actually really concentrated on that. Democrats patting themselves on the back for oil production increases? Ba. Lo. Ney. With all due | Read More »
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