“Over the past year, the cost of electricity for California residents increased by 5.2% versus a national average that rose 0.8%. If you are a business or industrial user of electricity in California, your May power bill was 42% or 64%, respectively, above the national average. We suspect power costs in California are going nowhere but up given the mandates in this clean energy plan.”

A recently completed study by the Associated Press (AP) into the performance of California’s Clean Energy Jobs Act showed that the money earmarked for the state’s coffers well below projections. More than half the money spent by the program has gone to consultants and auditors.

There’s more. The board created to oversee the plan has yet to meet after three years. And only 15% of the annual job creation target has been achieved over the three-year period the law has been in effect.…

“What is being proposed for Kentucky is disastrous – disastrous for our declining coal economy and equally disastrous for our very important manufacturing economy. The EPA claimed that it listened to the comments received on the proposed rule for the Clean Power Plan. It is clear from the emissions numbers the EPA has set for Kentucky that the agency did not listen to us.”

Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear (above) sounds a lot like Mitch McConnell. Kentucky’s energy way-of-life is threatened, and the news is not good for the other states that have grown up using coal as low-cost, reliable fossil-fuel generation.

The new formulation puts an upper bound on a state target of 1,305lb/MWh (for those states with 100% coal generation in their mix).  This has jammed a number of states whose rate was higher than this upper bound under the Proposed formulation, namely; Kentucky, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Ohio.…

“There is evidence that experience reduced the scope and se­verity of earlier errors [with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve]–that the 1981–84 perfor­mance was superior to the 1977–79 performance. But new facets of the pro­gram have brought new problems.”

“Combined with the $5 per barrel handling and storing expense [as of 1984], the overall market value of SPR oil is billions of dollars less than its embedded average cost of over $35 per barrel.”

A sacred cow of U.S. energy policy is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The case for the reserve assumes that another energy crisis lies around the corner, the reserve will be efficiently managed during the crisis to alleviate the emergency, and private inventories and entrepreneurship alone would be inadequate. The reserve is seen by proponents as the nation’s insurance policy against the inherent instability of the world oil market.…

“Forced use of higher-cost U.S.-flag vessels has benefitted domestic water carrier firms, shipbuilding companies, and associated labor. This advantage, however, has been diluted because inflated shipping costs has reduced the attractiveness of barge and tanker transport compared to other alternatives.”

The current debate over legalization of oil exports is intertwined with cabotage (water vessel) protectionism. The previous two posts (Part I; Part II) examined the history of oil-export regulation by the federal government; this post surveys water-vessel restrictions from Washington, D.C., that directly or indirectly impact the oil trade.

In 1808 and 1817, the United States passed legislation reserving coastwise and intercoastal trade to U.S.-built and registered vessels. [1] Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly known as the Jones Act, reaffirmed this policy and extended it to the noncontiguous U.S.…