“From time to time a statute gets written with a really good intention but reality does not follow that intention. That’s why we’re looking at these rules and regulations from a common-sense approach, we’re looking to get the best result we can.”

– DOE Secretary Rick Perry, quoted in Politico, July 16, 2019.

“According to Consumer Reports, the highest-ranked was an electric heat pump water with an average price of $1,200 (twice that of the runner-up gas water heater) and an average annual operating cost of $240. Second place was an apparently ordinary gas water heater with an average price of $600 and an average annual operating cost of $245.” (below)

On July 11, the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) and request for comments on a petition by the natural gas industry (a.k.a.…

“Few U.S. industries sing the praises of free enterprise more loudly than the oil industry. Yet few industries rely so heavily on special governmental favors.” (Milton Friedman, 1967)

In honor of his 107th birthday, MasterResource reprints a 1967 essay by Milton Friedman, “Oil and the Middle East,” which nicely summarized the political power and cronyism of the domestic oil industry at the time. [1] Far from just historical, the animus created by pro-crony policies over a half century came home to roost in the 1970s when Northeast politicians and others imposed price controls and new taxes on the industry. That animus exists today under the hubris of climate policy.

Background

From the 1920s through the early 1970s, the political power of the domestic oil industry (primarily independent oil producers versus the integrated majors) succeeded in having the major oil states (excepting California) artificially restrict (‘prorate’) production to ‘market demand.’…

“Probably more than anything, the legacy of past energy policies is advancing special interests – the energy industry, climate activists and environmentalists, governmental activists, and others – rather than the general public.”  

“Why then do we even need an energy policy? After all, we don’t have a computer policy, a clothes policy, or a food policy. Experience has shown that the country would be better off without one.”

The Green New Deal is just the latest in the long line of despicable energy policies proposed or implemented in the U.S. One has to go back to the 1970s (when I first entered the energy-policy debate) to find energy thinking this far off the track.

Why the demand for aggressive governmental intervention given its counterproductive promise and results (supply/demand distortions from mispricing; subsidies; unintended consequences).…

“The CO₂ helps unlock and recover crude oil from mature oil fields and residual oil zones. We use a good portion of this CO₂ in our own EOR projects….” (Kinder-Morgan)

“Many climate activists will have nothing to do with CCS because of its prominent/dominant role in enhanced oil recovery. But here is the Carbon Capture Coalition, with a green eye shade, promoting the very technology to increase American Energy Dominance.” (below)

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a new realm of rent-seeking in the all-things-climate debate. The Carbon Capture Coalition (a revamp of the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative) describes itself as “a nonpartisan coalition supporting the deployment and adoption of carbon capture technology … to foster domestic energy production, support jobs and reduce emissions, all at the same time.”…