Biden suspends oil and gas drilling on Federal Lands for 60 days for review.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

15 minutes ago, Roch said:

Now, Joe is going to sign a second Executive Order tomorrow ( Jan 27th) asking for Federal Bureaus and Agencies input on oil ban on Fed lands.  Wasn't that part of or at least implied in the first Executive Order for "Review"  ? 

I think Joe is feeling the heat.  This second signing is his way out.  The agencies and departments will come back and say , Hurts Economy , Hurts jobs , Hurts National Security , etc , etc etc 

All will be good in the Delaware basin and Alaskan oil fields.

Let's see .

If Joe pulls back on this Bernie and AOC will be quite upset. 

Joe is definitely feeling the heat. However, it's going to be damn difficult for him to back out of the Delaware without backing out on the Bears Ears. 

Bernie Sanders played a substantial role in getting Joe elected president. As you recall, Bernie was the frontrunner. Then the party informed him that the country would never elect an old socialist. He reluctantly surrendered. Also, the Sierra Club played a role. They've gotten stronger. And he is going to listen to his VP more than most presidents, because he is paving the way for her to become president. She is anti-fracking. 

So he may stand his ground. Time will tell.

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,177]

2 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

Rob, I think you're correct. Everyone, including Roch, thinks that companies will drill frenetically on federal lands during the next two years. After all, fully 50% of the "sweet spots" in the Delaware Basin are on federal lands. That won't happen as much as you might think on first blush. Why? Because federal lands there are en bloc, but also interlaced with private and state lands. Companies like to go in and corral a large tract of land on which to drill. The guys in the Delaware are beginning to "get it" that Mr. Biden wasn't just spouting campaign rhetoric: he fully intends to follow the California Plan, to rapidly squeeze the breath out of oil and gas while jump-starting renewables. 

If a company has a few wells on land that zigzags in and out and they haven't covered the ground, in the past they could get an easy lease renewal. That's not apt to happen in the near future. Better to take the hit on some of that and just mosey on down the road. To back that up, private land leases that were being shunned are now getting fairly sharp attention . . . within just a few days.

Have any of you actually been to S.E. New Mexicos Delaware Basin? I surely have, drilled many holes 40+ yrs ago. Carlsbad Caverns and the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) where they store them used up "nukes" take up a fair amount of land mass. And might have plans on digging more caves in the salt and concreting to expand. Pretty desolate area. The whole area is maybe 150 sq miles, and much of the Delaware has been hammered. Google map satty view and you will understand. So in fact, the remainder of the Delaware could in fact be drilled in a years time. There are enough rigs in Odessa sitting in the yards. 

Please note the actual size of the Delaware. Just in New Mexico ie:

Edited January 26, 2021 by Old-Ruffneck
add

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

48 minutes ago, Roch said:

Now, Joe is going to sign a second Executive Order tomorrow ( Jan 27th) asking for Federal Bureaus and Agencies input on oil ban on Fed lands.  Wasn't that part of or at least implied in the first Executive Order for "Review"  ? 

I think Joe is feeling the heat.  This second signing is his way out.  The agencies and departments will come back and say , Hurts Economy , Hurts jobs , Hurts National Security , etc , etc etc 

All will be good in the Delaware basin and Alaskan oil fields.

Let's see .

If Joe pulls back on this Bernie and AOC will be quite upset. 

The dictator in chief sure likes his executive orders. This graphic is already woefully out of date. 

[surrept33 + 609]

On 1/22/2021 at 9:38 AM, Roch said:

Don't forget gasoline tax.  Biden will substantially raise the Federal gasoline tax.   The states will follow.

His reasoning will be , " finance the the infrastructure bill ".   

In my state the Fed, State, Local gas tax is a little over  $0.60 gallon.  It was supposed to go toward roads and bridges.  It doesn't.  It goes in the general fund.  

Biden will tax gasoline like European countries. 

Look for the gas  taxes to double and eventually triple. 

The major use for oil is TRANSPORTATION FUEL.  Biden can't advance green technology fast enough.  He will make driving an ICE car more expensive than buying an electric car by making the price of a bbl of oil more expensive + substantially increased taxes on gasoline.  These costs affect the  low and middle income people disproportionally. 

You can just add a carbon dividend and return much of money from the carbon tax to the American tax payer to make it less regressive.

Even if a carbon tax doesn't happen de jure, it will happen defacto because of the pressures of the private sector, though I think a mixture of both is a better way to both have a market based mechanism and a tax for the needed carrot and sticks.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

32 minutes ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

So in fact, the remainder of the Delaware could in fact be drilled in a years time.

Yes, I've been there many times. Calling it a "pretty desolate area" is being kind. I like it quite a bit because it has a stark beauty to it, but that's not your usual tourist's view. Actually, when you go down into the Carlsbad Caverns, you get a pretty good idea of the formation that makes up that area: sandstone and limestone, which is very porous and caves in easily, sort of sandwiched between stacks of dolomite. That's one of the reasons there's so much cross-communication between wells in that area--the pressure-head drops fast. 

As to drilling it out in a year's time, I presume you are referring to Lea and Eddy Counties in New Mexico. If so, you're entirely right: those two counties have already been drilled pretty hard and they could be finished off in two years' time. That's pretty likely what will happen, and that won't exactly mean that the drilling will get much more frenetic than it was pre-pandemic. In fact, I doubt it ever gets like that again. 

It's good to get a perspective on this from someone who has actually worked in that area. It has indeed been "hammered."

Anyway, I suspect old Joe has been told that the New Mexico part of this--the most oil-rich part of the Delaware Sub-Basin--can be finished off in two years and he won't be hurting the blue state of NM all that much. As to a drilling frenzy on the federal lands, it may last for a few months but then they'll start pulling out. That's Joe's out.

[surrept33 + 609]

3 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

I've always argued that a carbon tax is cheating.

If your green systems are so cost effective, why are you penalizing us for using fossil fuels while subsidizing green energy in addition?

"We'll impose a carbon tax to incentivize the profitable field of renewables" = oxymoron 

A carbon tax simply is a more direct way to penalize pathologies caused by commercial activity that do not take enough externalities into account (the classic example is two factories on a river. one is a chemical factory that dumps waste into the river, making it inhabitable for the fish that the other factory tries to sustainability harvest). It's one of many carrot and sticks that society has developed over the centuries. It's a form of coordination, one of government's jobs. 

I look at it similar to LED bulbs vs filament bulbs. 

I doubt most of any carbon tax would go to subsidiaries anyways. Getting "green bonds" is actually already relatively easy from the traditional financial sector since people sense a lot of growth opportunities. There was a lot of things learned from companies that tried, and failed to commercialize renewables in past decades. We're much further ahead now, but oil/gas still has an incumbency benefit in so far that there is already so much built infrastructure for them (but there probably has not been enough investment in CCS). 

I think the grid will be the most interesting thing to watch, especially since there is a lot of advanced (automatically dynamically reconfiguring) grid systems almost on market - here are some that ARPA-E has funded:

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/scaleup-launch-pad-2020#energybrief

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by surrept33

[Rob Kramer + 696]

31 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

As to drilling it out in a year's time, I presume you are referring to Lea and Eddy Counties in New Mexico. If so, you're entirely right: those two counties have already been drilled pretty hard and they could be finished off in two years' time. That's pretty likely what will happen, and that won't exactly mean that the drilling will get much more frenetic than it was pre-pandemic. In fact, I doubt it ever gets like that again. 

It's good to get a perspective on this from someone who has actually worked in that area. It has indeed been "hammered."

Anyway, I suspect old Joe has been told that the New Mexico part of this--the most oil-rich part of the Delaware Sub-Basin--can be finished off in two years and he won't be hurting the blue state of NM all that much. As to a drilling frenzy on the federal lands, it may last for a few months but then they'll start pulling out. That's Joe's out.

Either way (as someone who hasn't been anywhere near there) it sounds unlikely to be able to flood us with shale. If I'm correctly understanding they would have to keep drilling at current rates (able to exhaust the area in 2 years) to not have decline?

Edit : and the area youd drill next would have to be equally oil dense to not how decline follow?

Edited January 26, 2021 by Rob Kramer

[surrept33 + 609]

2 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

This is part of the "California Plan," and you're totally right. Actually, California lags the rest of the country by 35% in reduction of Greenhouse Gases . . . mainly because they've been actively decommissioning nuclear and natural gas power plants as their solar/wind come on line. 

That means that California isn't truly mitigating the climate change threat. Add to that the particulate carbonaceous matter from burning forests and it is very likely that California is the single worst offender in the United States. 

They lecture the rest of us, and their "defense" is that oil and gas has changed the climate so that their forests are burning. No, their forests are burning because they have so damn much corruption in their state that millions of miles of electric utility lines that should have been buried long ago are sparking fires. They act as though they don't know that the cladding around the wires becomes taut during cold and sags during hot weather, and that after fifty years of that, the cladding and the wires become unsafe. 

I'm not picking on California for any other reason than Mr. Biden is using the California Plan as his blueprint, and it is as flawed as you get. In fact, if they push the rest of the states enough, some smart fellow is going to figure out that California is the biggest offender of all. Carbon doesn't care whether it comes from an exhaust pipe or a burning tree. If a carbon tax is issued, the states will sue California for all that carbon it releases into the trophosphere each year. Other countries might join in. But Mr. Biden isn't astute enough to figure this stuff out on his own and unfortunately he has no one who will tell him.

A carbon tax? Bring it on, but be sure to figure in the million of tons of ash that spewed into the air last year from California fires.

The "california plan" is more like the the European plan. There are a lot of problems with it. I'd prefer something closer to what Canada has done. 

I think this moratorium on drilling for a few months is prudent. There were a LOT of changes made during the Trump administration that benefited few people besides oil/gas companies. This is was all of anti-"deep state" boggieman that Trump tried to demolish. Well, at it did was cause a lot civil servants (who were well qualified, but working in the public sector, didn't even make that much money), to leave. 

http://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/DOI.pdf

Ironically, even then, because of the law relative price of oil caused by the flood of supply, it's not like people made money ham over fist in that industry unless they had some sort of technological or economies of scale. 

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

8 minutes ago, Rob Kramer said:

Either way (as someone who hasn't been anywhere near there) it sounds unlikely to be able to flood us with shale. If I'm correctly understanding they would have to keep drilling at current rates (able to exhaust the area in 2 years) to not have decline?

Edit : and the area youd drill next would have to be equally oil dense to not how decline follow?

My opinion would be that you're right: drilling out the Delaware Sub-basin entirely, concentrating on the federal lands part, would not flood the market with shale oil. It's oil-rich, but also exceptionally gassy, and it's almost pure methane rather than containing ethane. Don't get me wrong, the thing could produce 2M blls/day during those two years . . . but that's not exactly flooding the market.

And you're right again, the area after that would have to be equally dense, and it's not. The area after that is over the state line in Texas. And there are quite a few years left to infill the Bakken, the Eagle Ford, and to move into the (fairly exciting) crescent known as the Eaglebine. 

By 2030, I expect most of the United States oilfields to be drilled. Some of the wells drilled in the latter half of this decade will be conventional (vertical) wells drilled for <$250,000 each, with a two-year payout. These will basically replace the soon-to-be-exhausted stripper wells (conventional also, of which thousands persist). The major production will be from Suriname and Guyana. By 2030, there will be no coal-fired utility plants. 

Oil will become more and more secondary, as LNG will be the preferred fossil fuel energy source and will also be preferable feedstock in the petrochemical plants. Oil will die with a whimper, not with a roar. But it has carried mankind farther, faster, than evolution would have done without the Permian Extinction. I have no idea what made the simple lizard grow so large, but bless his heart.  

[JoMack + 547]

47 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

My opinion would be that you're right: drilling out the Delaware Sub-basin entirely, concentrating on the federal lands part, would not flood the market with shale oil. It's oil-rich, but also exceptionally gassy, and it's almost pure methane rather than containing ethane. Don't get me wrong, the thing could produce 2M blls/day during those two years . . . but that's not exactly flooding the market.

And you're right again, the area after that would have to be equally dense, and it's not. The area after that is over the state line in Texas. And there are quite a few years left to infill the Bakken, the Eagle Ford, and to move into the (fairly exciting) crescent known as the Eaglebine. 

By 2030, I expect most of the United States oilfields to be drilled. Some of the wells drilled in the latter half of this decade will be conventional (vertical) wells drilled for <$250,000 each, with a two-year payout. These will basically replace the soon-to-be-exhausted stripper wells (conventional also, of which thousands persist). The major production will be from Suriname and Guyana. By 2030, there will be no coal-fired utility plants. 

Oil will become more and more secondary, as LNG will be the preferred fossil fuel energy source and will also be preferable feedstock in the petrochemical plants. Oil will die with a whimper, not with a roar. But it has carried mankind farther, faster, than evolution would have done without the Permian Extinction. I have no idea what made the simple lizard grow so large, but bless his heart.  

Honestly, I believe we'll be consuming crude oil for way longer than the next 10 years.  I think in 1957 they buried gas cans in Tulsa since the experts were predicting there would be no oil in 2007.  It's weird how we always predict the future but it doesn't seem to work out.  The government gets bigger and bigger and gets more and more inept and moves to destroy an industry with the stroke of a pen.  They are after power, raw power, without compromise, negotiation, debate or solution.   

So, Biden throws the oil and gas industry into a dumpster fire but has no alternative.  He plans to bury the federal government's vehicles running on gas and voila, EVs will arrive.  But, where is the infrastructure?  Maybe I'm nuts but is anyone else concerned about how this whole plan is going to work?  A new gas station was built along a highway where I live.  A Valero station, which I find ironic, with 12 rows with 24 pumps loaded with gasoline.   I walked around and there wasn't a charging station anywhere.  This is a busy highway, so I wonder how the government with the "CLIMATE CRISES" will figure out when it will start getting those stations ready for the millions of electric vehicles it plans to impose on us little people.  

Elon Musk told Wall Street there wasn't enough energy to power his fleet.  That, of course, is the one he plans to build or is building in China.  Today he told Wall Street he was going to drill for natural gas near his Space Ex plant.  Now, if you're in the oil industry, this is hilarious.  But, I think his stock price went up so it's not just the government who is insane.

I have some small interests on federal lands in NM.  Two of the Operators where I hold ORRIs drill in the Delaware in Eddy County.  One thing about the Delaware is that the formation has many producing zones.  They are great wells, last a while, but produce enormous amounts of water but these guys manage it with injection and take other Operator's water for profit.   When the news hit that Biden was banning drilling on federal lands, it was not all that surprising, but it was just as bad during Obama.  Not quite as bad, but difficult since he stopped competitive leasing and permits were long, arduous and time consuming and really expensive.  The weird thing about the Biden ban is that apparently, the two Operators in the Delaware where I hold some small interests sent me e-mails over the last couple of weeks to give them info to fill requirements to clean title for drilling.  So, the industry is doing it's thing and we'll see what happens.

BTW, I saw Chuck Schumer on Rachel Maddow last night.  I was surprised to see his face since he is never on television as far as I know.  He believes he is just oh so, above it all. Of course, he was doing the "CLIMATE CRISES" mantra, and then I realized that he was also on local TV in NY.  While he was jawboning a woman came up to him on the street, in a mask, with a shopping bag and stopped and just let him have it.  I mean, big time, screaming her brains out about how much of a loser he was.  The best video ever if you can find it on You Tube.  So, it's strange this almighty warrior of the Senate would be mucking about on TV and in the streets of NYC.  Of course, the lightbulb goes off.  AOC.  The left has arrived and it will eat its own.  So, that's a bit more good news.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

2 hours ago, JoMack said:

Honestly, I believe we'll be consuming crude oil for way longer than the next 10 years.

Oh, I do too, JoMack. When I said oil will die with a whimper, I simply meant that large-volume oil will taper off. And that LNG is proving to be a cleaner, easier petrochemical feedstock. 

In fact, I think we're going to see a resurgence of oil and gas, at some point. 

[Roch + 537]

To start spending trillions on solar/wind transition at this time  is a boondoggle in my opinion.

First you can't put solar or wind energy in the tank of your car.  

As for electricity generation Natural Gas, while not perfect is much more acceptable than coal or gasoil .

Why spend tens of $ trillions on solar and wind when we should know by 2025 if Nuclear Fusion is feasible with commercial availability in the early 2030's. 

If current effort for Nuclear Fusion does not pan out by 2025 than spend your Trillions. Commonwealth Fusion is building a prototype. Their design concept will either be proved or not by 2025.  I know of 17 other efforts behind them. 

I am personally convinced that EV uptake will occur much faster than most believe.  

Oil won't go away .  It should be around for a long time.  I just think EVs will decrease demand , thus price sooner than latter.  

New models,  less expensive solid state batteries that can charge in five minutes will fuel exponential EV growth at some point. 

I'm not concerned about EV infrastructure.  Charging outlets will become commonplace in all home garages. Today you can buy a unit for $500 - $600 (that will drop by half in a few years) plus a couple hundred to get an electrician to install.  Public charging infrastructure will be built out as the EV uptake accelerates. Between 75% to 85% of all driving occurs within 25 miles from your home.  Fleet's will install enough chargers at their home base of operation.

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Roch

[surrept33 + 609]

4 hours ago, JoMack said:

Honestly, I believe we'll be consuming crude oil for way longer than the next 10 years.  I think in 1957 they buried gas cans in Tulsa since the experts were predicting there would be no oil in 2007.  It's weird how we always predict the future but it doesn't seem to work out.  The government gets bigger and bigger and gets more and more inept and moves to destroy an industry with the stroke of a pen.  They are after power, raw power, without compromise, negotiation, debate or solution.   

So, Biden throws the oil and gas industry into a dumpster fire but has no alternative.  He plans to bury the federal government's vehicles running on gas and voila, EVs will arrive.  But, where is the infrastructure?  Maybe I'm nuts but is anyone else concerned about how this whole plan is going to work?  A new gas station was built along a highway where I live.  A Valero station, which I find ironic, with 12 rows with 24 pumps loaded with gasoline.   I walked around and there wasn't a charging station anywhere.  This is a busy highway, so I wonder how the government with the "CLIMATE CRISES" will figure out when it will start getting those stations ready for the millions of electric vehicles it plans to impose on us little people.  

Elon Musk told Wall Street there wasn't enough energy to power his fleet.  That, of course, is the one he plans to build or is building in China.  Today he told Wall Street he was going to drill for natural gas near his Space Ex plant.  Now, if you're in the oil industry, this is hilarious.  But, I think his stock price went up so it's not just the government who is insane.

 

It takes a lot less infrastructure to build EV chargers. You don't need to build a full gas station. There are a lot of companies working on retrofitting parking meters with EV chargers that can also draw from the (local) smart grid. States will likely increasingly mandate both (in public and @ home) if you look at current bellweathers. 

Not surprising SpaceX is hungry for natural gas since they use methalox populsion still. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by surrept33

[surrept33 + 609]

21 minutes ago, Roch said:

Spending $ trillions on solar /wind is a boondoggle in my opinion.

First you can't put solar or wind energy in the tank of your car.  

Natural gas, while not perfect is much more acceptable than coal or gasoil for electricity generation.

Why spend tens of $ trillions on solar and wind when we should know by 2025 if Nuclear Fusion is feasible with commercial availability in the early 2030's. 

If current effort for Fusion does not pan out by 2025 than spend your Trillions.

I am personally convinced that EV uptake will occur much faster than most believe.  

Oil won't go away .  It should be around for a long time.  I just think EVs will decrease demand , thus price sooner than latter.  

New models,  less expensive solid state batteries that can charge in five minutes will fuel exponential EV growth at some point. 

I'm not concerned about EV infrastructure.  Charging outlets will become commonplace in all home garages. Today you can buy one for $500 - $600 plus a couple hundred to get an electrician to install.  Public charging infrastructure will be built out as the EV uptake excellent area.

That's it I'm done.

Personally, I think the (mild) hybrid is the best solution for a while. However, pure EV, solar, and wind, and innovations in grid infrastructure are all synergistic.

I think you'll see a lot of work on sharing of best practices in smart building and cloud-based IoT in the next 10 years, much of it open source (see the ontology and example implementations here):

https://brickschema.org/

https://project-haystack.org/tag

https://github.com/google/digitalbuildings

When most entities in each building are meshed together in very low power networks, they can do a lot more active power/energy load sharing. And the hardware to do so has both become commodified and the standards "wars" are more or less a thing of the past. 

Fusion has always been "3 decades away" for the last 70 years. The closest to production is the SPARC, but we'll still have to see the net energy gain is achieved (physically it can be done, but at what physical scale?): https://news.newenergytimes.net/2019/07/03/did-mit-and-commonwealth-fusion-systems-mislead-fusion-investors-2/

I'd say they are far off from mass scale commercialization anyways, due to the lack of heavy forges. 

[Roch + 537]

9 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

Personally, I think the (mild) hybrid is the best solution for a while. However, pure EV, solar, and wind, and innovations in grid infrastructure are all synergistic.

I think you'll see a lot of work on sharing of best practices in smart building and cloud-based IoT in the next 10 years, much of it open source (see the ontology and example implementations here):

https://brickschema.org/

https://project-haystack.org/tag

https://github.com/google/digitalbuildings

When most entities in each building are meshed together in very low power networks, they can do a lot more active power/energy load sharing. And the hardware to do so has both become commodified and the standards "wars" are more or less a thing of the past. 

Fusion has always been "3 decades away" for the last 70 years. The closest to production is the SPARC, but we'll still have to see the net energy gain is achieved (physically it can be done, but at what physical scale?): https://news.newenergytimes.net/2019/07/03/did-mit-and-commonwealth-fusion-systems-mislead-fusion-investors-2/

I'd say they are far off from mass scale commercialization anyways, due to the lack of heavy forges. 

I'm all in on smart buildings and IoT.  Both great for energy conservation .  Useless for energy generation. 

Without large scale reasonably priced storage solar/wind is limited to certain geographies and application.

In my opinion .

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Roch

[surrept33 + 609]

35 minutes ago, Roch said:

I'm all in on smart buildings and IoT.  Both great for energy conservation .  Useless for energy generation. 

Without large scale reasonably priced storage solar/wind is limited to certain geographies and application.

In my opinion .

 

That's true, we'd also need to spend a lot more money on high voltage transmission lines (this is already the "default" in developing countries), we just have a lot of legacy infrastructure, as well as a lot of red tape (and other such laws that didn't exist when for example, we built the first transcontinental railroads or canals) to unifying grids (you need to in effect, be able to store potentials in various creative ways, even utilizing gravity is possible!). There are also plan B ideas (mostly geoengineering: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/)

Edited January 27, 2021 by surrept33

[JoMack + 547]

9 hours ago, surrept33 said:

It takes a lot less infrastructure to build EV chargers. You don't need to build a full gas station. There are a lot of companies working on retrofitting parking meters with EV chargers that can also draw from the (local) smart grid. States will likely increasingly mandate both (in public and @ home) if you look at current bellweathers. 

Not surprising SpaceX is hungry for natural gas since they use methalox populsion still. 

Don't see getting to the EV infrastructure problems with retrofitting parking meters.  Seems rather a small move since we're talking about meters on only city streets unless I'm missing something.  If you don't have an unreliable electric grid you'll most likely charge at home.  Think highway driving is an issue here and having access on back roads where gasoline can be transported in the vehicle as backup.  If your EV battery loses power, what's the fix?

Near the Boca Chica launchpad of SpaceX, Musk is currently in a lawsuit with a Texas Operator over 806 acres for his plan to drill for natural gas in Cameron County, Texas.  Not sure the depth of any well he plans since 806 acres where natural gas wells were already drilled have been plugged and abandoned or dry holes so not sure what he's trying to accomplish.  But, like all climate change town cryers, Musk tells the NYT in September 2020 "Honestly, I feel a bit bad about hating on the oil and gas industry".  So, now we know why he's pulling the 180.  Can't wait until he starts his drilling program.  He'll be very shocked at the expenditures he'll need to even as he sees the cost to build only the pad.  

[JoMack + 547]

Biden on the stump with his "giant" Executive Order to kill energy.  But, wait!  He's going to get union workers on the job to plug the millions of wells that currently exist in the U.S.  Yeah, that's the ticket!  Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, the legislators are talking secession.  This is going to be a very lonnnnngggg 4 years.  It will be like "dog years" trying to figure out how to get out of the country without being taxed.

[Vivian Fulk + 17]

On 1/23/2021 at 12:51 PM, Ward Smith said:

 

He just stated in his speech "and NO I am not banning fracking." The above statement is wrong. Fracking done without methane release is great! But only without methane release. 

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

29 minutes ago, Vivian Fulk said:

Fracking done without methane release is great! But only without methane release. 

Well, Vivian, you can tell Mr. Biden that if you don't vent and you don't flare, methane release during the fracturing process is down to about 1%. That's awfully low. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

16 hours ago, surrept33 said:

It takes a lot less infrastructure to build EV chargers. You don't need to build a full gas station. There are a lot of companies working on retrofitting parking meters with EV chargers that can also draw from the (local) smart grid. States will likely increasingly mandate both (in public and @ home) if you look at current bellweathers. 

Not surprising SpaceX is hungry for natural gas since they use methalox populsion still. 

Hand waving doesn't cut it. It's trivial to bury some fuel tanks and pour asphalt, not so trivial to run megawatts of power. Just because you see power lines overhead by no means indicates that there's spare power available. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

1 hour ago, Vivian Fulk said:

He just stated in his speech "and NO I am not banning fracking." The above statement is wrong. Fracking done without methane release is great! But only without methane release. 

No one fracks with the intent of releasing methane. This is just one of those doublespeak politician lies where the industry gets handed an impossible task but "it's not the government's fault". The water used in fracking gets "carbonated" by the process. The total methane released is comparable to the "natural" methane produced by a very small pond. That won't stop the bunglecrats from writing regulations that are designed to be impossible to achieve. This was never about saving the environment, this was always about delivering boons to selected kleptocrats. 

[Roch + 537]

2 hours ago, JoMack said:

Biden on the stump with his "giant" Executive Order to kill energy.  But, wait!  He's going to get union workers on the job to plug the millions of wells that currently exist in the U.S.  Yeah, that's the ticket!  Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, the legislators are talking secession.  This is going to be a very lonnnnngggg 4 years.  It will be like "dog years" trying to figure out how to get out of the country without being taxed.

If I move to Texas now will I get Texas citizenship when they leave.  

Long for years.  It already feels like four years of Biden. 

Wyoming's also pissed.  Their Senators are speaking up against Joe.

If you can't stand Joe you should stop the complaining and go 100% in on winning back Senate and House in 2022.

I know when Texas joined the Union they kept an option to leave if they choose.  

How about other states ? 

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Roch

[hemanthaa@mail.com + 64]

Even without new licences, the existing shale oil producers will substitute, the internal bureaucratic hindrances and the moves by the OPEC that go far beyond the normal undercutting in any competitive sector with ingenuity, in order to minimize the production costs and make profit while staying relevant. 

They have done it once before with innovative methods and will do it again. The members of the OPEC do not have that gift – collective or individual.

The issue of Federal lands will not be a significant worry at this stage; there are plenty of private lands in the US for the same purpose.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

15 minutes ago, Roch said:

Is Vivian a real person ? Or a bot ? 

She's just right up there. Ask her. 😊