Back in 1996, the Cato Institute published the above two-volume treatise. Oil, Gas, and Government was the first (and still only) classical-liberal history of intervention in a major U.S. industry. I subsequently lectured on the book at Cato in Washington, DC and at a few other locals.

I recently ran across the outline/major points of my presentation, which I share below for those interested in the historical sweep of oil and gas regulation, tax policy, government ownership, and public grants.

To understand the perils of interventionism (particularly price controls and wartime planning), I document the coordination and problem solving in exploration/production, transmission/transportation, refining, and distribution/marketing. (Electricity, a separate energy industry, was not covered in the book.)

“Government Intervention in U.S. Oil and Gas Markets: Searching for ‘Market Failure’” (Synopsis of Major Themes of Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S.…

“All economic pain and no environmental gain is bad politics coming and going. The Democrats do not seem to want to touch it, if their vote on the Green New Deal was any indication.”

” … history will judge the climate alarm as exaggerated, CO2 as the gas of life, and carbon-based energy and modern living as heaven on earth. Governor Abbott, thank you.”

During the day, Houston, Texas, bustles as the oil and gas capital of the world. The daily business fare as reported by the hometown Houston Chronicle is a new offshore project here, new refinery or petrochemical plant there, new onshore production plays elsewhere.

And then there is a whole new industry within an industry, LNG exports from Texas and Louisiana to distant ports–and even LNG tank cars crossing into Mexico.…

“There is no longer any question that solar energy is feasible and cost effective.” (Jimmy Carter, 1979)

“This is the technology that will allow us to provide solar electric power at competitive prices, both in the United States and in other areas of the world.” (John Urquhart, Enron Corp, 1995)

“Solar is going to rip apart the energy business as we know it.” (John Berger, Sunnova Energy Corp, 2019)

The impending competitiveness of solar-generated electricity is a siren song of a dilute, intermittent energy trying to compete with dense, storable energies. As it was a century ago, the reality today is that mineral energies producing electricity are far more economic than isolated power for homes and businesses in urban (and many rural) areas.

Background

From the time of Thomas Edison to the present, economies of scale in electrical generation, transmission, and usage has resulted in central station service.…

“MasterResource.org is where the ‘grassroots’ anti-wind power movement that Bradley works tirelessly to promote merges with the fossil fuel industry’s astroturf campaign against renewable energy.” (Dave Anderson, Energy and Policy Institute, April 17, 2019)

Perhaps I am a tireless worker. But no, the pushback against industrial wind turbines is not from “astroturf” but from on-the-spot, victimized people. In this sense, MasterResource comes from the grassroots, not the tree tops.

Mr. Anderson’s writeup, “Koch-backed blog defends Trump’s false claim about windmills & cancer,” takes a look at this site with this background:

MasterResource.org is a project of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a group that together with its advocacy arm the American Energy Alliance has received millions of dollars from the Koch network, as well as money from the coal, oil and gas industries.