A Free-Market Energy Blog

Superfluous Entrepreneurship: A California Offshore Oil Example

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 9, 2026

Ricky Carroll, now a Senior Geophysicist at Hilcorp, provided a remembrance of a crazy workaround regarding oil production from an offshore California oil platform.

This is what I recall from when I worked the offshore fields Hueso and Huesocito as a geologist.  My primary job was generating prospects in the Gulf of Mexico, but I was assigned short term projects to work non-ops offshore Santa Barbara. This was in the early to mid 80’s.

As I think back, regarding those CA  fields, we were not allowed to run pipelines to shore from the platforms because local communities and the states forbid new pipeline construction after the Santa Barbara spill of 1969.

Yet, CA still  had the best refineries for taking this sour crude and it already had an established onshore pipeline network.…

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U.S. Withdrawal from UN Framework on Climate Change Underway

By Robert Bradley Jr. --

“The global climate elite are scrambling for relevancy and power. The poll-conscious wind and solar lobbies are disingenuously pitching affordability. And the climate zealots are getting nutty. Energy reality bats last.”

Let history note that the United States has issued a notice to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), effective February 27, 2026. This withdrawal is broader than the previously announced (and started) withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. The UNFCCC is the governing global network behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) “consensus” science (based on subjective climate-model interpretation), as well as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Climate Accord of 2015.

The one-year window is running, with formal withdrawal set for February 27, 2027. As summarized by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):

In January, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the UNFCCC.

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Plant Vogtle and Geogia Power: Never Forget!

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 8, 2026

“Plant Vogtle is not an argument for wind and solar, which are also uneconomic and require government subsidies, penalizing taxpayers and running up the federal budget deficit. It is a call for a free market in electricity where ratepayers come first, while protecting the environment from wind, solar, and battery industrialization.”

“Clean Energy Strategist” Jamie Skarr revisited the Plant Vogtle #3 and #4 debacle with this summary:

World’s Most Expensive Electricity Just Went Online (Why It Matters) 💡

Remember when a gallon of gas cost 99 cents? Now imagine if one gas station spent 15 years building a “next-generation” pump that made gas cost $50 per gallon. You’d probably have questions.

That’s basically what just happened with electricity in Georgia. The state spent 15 years and $37 billion building new nuclear power plants that will force every resident to pay an extra $420 on their electric bills each year – forever.

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‘Peak Rock’: The ONION Goes Neo-Malthusian (Fixity/ depletion curse expands)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 6, 2026
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Ron Clutz: Why Climate Alarmism?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 5, 2026
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Trump II’s ‘Nuclear Renaissance”: A Government Play

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 4, 2026
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Nuclear at 70: Federal Subsidies and Regulation Did Not Work

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 3, 2026
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Energy & Environmental Review: March 2, 2026

By -- March 2, 2026
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Rooftop Solar: Is There a Case? (Part III)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 27, 2026
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Sunnova’s Continuing Mess: Buyer Beware (Part II)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 26, 2026
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