” … it is time for an energy awakening – for the natural gas and oil supply chain and the government at all levels to open a new era of working together to ensure that essential energy resources are unlocked; to encourage investment opportunities and accelerate infrastructure development; and to strengthen global energy security, affordability and reliability.” (API, below)
The American Petroleum Institute (API) has represented the larger integrated oil companies since its founding just over a century ago. Much of its early mission was to standardize machinery specifications as well as accounting practices to modernize and streamline the industry. But API’s other major function has been politics, which became so great that the trade group moved from New York City to Washington, D.C. in 1969.
Often, the self-interest of the majors was the free market, particularly in the troubled 1970s. But API supported state-level market-demand proration in the 1920s and 1930s forward, and today it supports government subsidies for what its members can do in the name of climate change, such as carbon capture and storage. In fact, API gave up the moral high ground and has been playing defense since ceding the climate debate to the activist Left.
That has now changed. The global energy crisis, and energy problems at home, have given oil and gas a wide opening. The radical anti-fossil-fuel agenda of Joe Biden has citizen voters up in arms–and the oil and gas industry has the answers that Obstructionist Biden does not.
Thus API finds itself on offense and, to some extent, off the greenwash climate-alarmism bandwagon.
So it was of interest to review API’s much advertised 10-point plan to right-size the industry to meet high and growing domestic and world demand for oil and natural gas. There is no Peak Oil or Peak Gas; there is an Outsized Government that is artificially constraining a free-market industry.
Nine of the ten proposals below are free-market-oriented. But #7, mentioned here (yellow), is not:
Advance Lower Carbon Energy Tax Provisions
Congress should expand and extend Section 45Q tax credits for carbon capture, utilization, and storage development and create a new tax credit for hydrogen produced from all sources.
Plank #7 should be changed to:
End Preferential Tax Credits
Congress should should not expand or extend Section 45Q tax credits for Carbon Capture and Storage. Congress should not extend subsidies for Electric Vehicles and should eliminate the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind power and Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar.
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10 for 2022 Manifesto
America’s core promise – the freedom to be, to create, to aspire – drives the opportunity for all Americans to have better lives and reach new heights. American energy empowers American opportunity. Given today’s global unrest and economic uncertainty, this has never been more true.
Americans have been here before, with fuel shortages in the 1970s serving as a vivid reminder. Today, energy demand is outstripping supply. Inflation is the highest it has been in 40 years. Fuel prices have soared. Putin’s brutal aggression in Ukraine has united the West against his regime and the energy he once sold to Europe. It is all connected – and alarming. But a solution is beneath our feet.
Our nation is blessed with abundant natural gas and oil that is the envy of other countries. It is a foundation of our economy, supporting more than 11 million U.S. jobs, and makes our American way of life possible. It has revived Main Street storefronts, restored U.S. manufacturing, driven job creation and bolstered our nation’s ability to compete. It has made America safer in a turbulent world.
Given global circumstances, it is time for an energy awakening – for the natural gas and oil supply chain and the government at all levels to open a new era of working together to ensure that essential energy resources are unlocked; to encourage investment opportunities and accelerate infrastructure development; and to strengthen global energy security, affordability and reliability.
Bottom line: Washington policymakers must confront the global mismatch between demand and supply that has driven higher fuel prices by supporting greater U.S. production. To address the growing crisis we face, Congress and the President must support energy investment, create new access and keep regulation from unnecessarily restricting energy growth. The world is calling out for energy leadership. America can and should step up fast.
API’s 10-point plan to restore U.S. energy leadership and help fulfill our great nation’s core promise.
Final Comment
API can do more, building on the above plan (except for Plank #7 as it now stands). The writings, lecturing, and advocacy of Alex Epstein and Robert Bryce should be 1) acknowledged for setting up the Great Reversal in policy debate and action that is evident today and 2) promoted to seize the moral high ground in the climate/energy debate.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/26/1107265390/refinery-shortage-high-gas-prices-russia
As usual, when the subject has anything to do with economics, energy, physics, government regulation or mathematics, NPR is completely and totally clueless.
NPR is simply incapable of figuring out why nobody in their right mind will attempt to build a new refinery or nuclear generating plant.
It’s simple and the fact that NPR can’t figure it out says all anybody needs to know about NPR.
BIDEN MALADMINISTRATION GOES CRAWLING ON ITS HANDS AND KNEES TO BEG VENEZUELA FOR PETROLEUM
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-politics-venezuela-colombia-ec798d70f4e19e05c88e6ae2b43a19e9
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Senior U.S. government officials have quietly traveled to Caracas in the latest bid to bring home detained Americans and rebuild relations with the South American oil giant as the war in Ukraine drags on, forcing the U.S. to recalibrate other foreign policy objectives.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson described the trip as a welfare visit focused on the safety of several U.S. citizens detained in Caracas, including a group of oil executives from Houston-based Citgo jailed more than four years ago. The delegation includes Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy on hostage affairs, as well as Ambassador James Story, who heads the U.S. government’s Venezuelan Affairs Unit out of neighboring Colombia.
President Nicolás Maduro confirmed the visit during televised remarks, saying the delegation would meet with a trusted ally, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, to “give continuity to the bilateral agenda between the government of the United States and the government of Venezuela.”
The visit follows a surprise trip in March by the two officials and Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council director for the Western Hemisphere. That was the first White House trip to the county in more than two decades…
…It’s unclear what else the officials are seeking to accomplish during the mission. But high on the list are likely to be Maduro’s demand that the U.S. lift crippling oil sanctions that have exacerbated hardships in what was once South America’s most prosperous nation [until socialists wrecked its economy]…
Since the March trip, both the Biden administration and Venezuela’s socialist government have shown a willingness to engage after years of hostilities between Washington and Caracas over Maduro’s 2018 re-election, which was marred by irregularities. The U.S. and other nations withdrew recognition of Maduro after that election, and instead, recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
Although negotiations between Maduro and the opposition have yet to resume, the U.S. then renewed a license so that oil companies, including Chevron, could continue to perform only basic upkeep of wells they operate jointly with Venezuela’s state-run oil giant PDVSA…
…The U.S. is also interested in tapping into Venezuela’s vast oil wealth as the war in Ukraine has led to a 50% jump in oil prices that is fueling the worst inflation in decades.
Maduro during his televised remarks Monday alluded to remarks from an official close to French President Emmanuel Macron urging the U.S. to ease sanctions on Venezuela and Iran to offset the spike in oil prices. The comments were made on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Seven leaders in Germany.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves but production has plummeted for the past decade as a result of a drop in prices, mismanagement and the U.S. sanctions. Its presence in the world oil market is today marginal and any attempt to boost production would take time to materialize.
Meh on Venezuela
Keystone XL would be shipping more heavy crude than Venezuela is presently capable of exporting. With the exodus of US companies due nationalization by Chavez, not sanctions, Rosneft has stepped in to kinda sorta help increase production from next to nothing to 1 milllion BPD.
Increasing production of tigh shale crude in the USA is not going to help refineries but will help the expoft market. The problem is that it is very light and vapor locks crude units if refined as is when run at capacity, thus a net decrease in gasoline and diesel production with up to 30% loss in refining capacity;