Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
May 6, 2020
Can We Tackle Both Climate Change and Covid-19 Recovery?
No — Carbon taxes and green policies harm economic growth and jobs The close relationships between real gross domestic product, employment and energy consumption for both less and more developed economies mean that policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions would reduce economic growth and employment. The reason is straightforward: they would increase the cost…
April 28, 2020
How the Trump Administration Should Structure Gulf Oil Royalty Relief
The Trump administration reportedly is considering a proposal to reduce the royalty rate on the future oil and gas production from forthcoming sales of leases for exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. That proposal is ill-conceived; a far better approach would be a temporary suspension of royalty payments from existing operations, and it is clear…
April 13, 2020
It Would Be Wise for Government to Not Meddle in the Oil Market
The crude oil sector now is confronted by a sharp decline in demand conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and an increase in production attendant upon the price feud between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Whether the deal brokered over the weekend by the Trump administration among Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. will raise…
April 6, 2020
Comment Letter to the Railroad Commission of Texas
To the Railroad Commission of Texas: Re: Motion for Commission Called Hearing on the Verified Complaint of Pioneer Natural Resources U.S.A. Inc. and Parsley Energy Inc. to Determine Reasonable Market Demand for Oil in the State of Texas Dear Commissioners: My name is Benjamin Zycher; I am the senior economic and policy staff member for…
March 30, 2020
Oil-market Central Planning: Not Just for Socialists Anymore
Hard times indeed are hard, and that adjective is wholly inadequate to describe the double whammy now afflicting U.S. crude-oil producers: declining demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the large increase in overseas production attendant upon the flood-the-market tug-of-war between the Russians and the Saudis. As a result, the domestic price of crude oil (West…
March 23, 2020
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Fallacies of “Embargo” Thinking: Does the Private Sector Stockpile Too Little Oil?
President Donald Trump announced a few days ago that the US Department of Energy (DoE) will purchase “large quantities of crude oil” to be stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), created under authority of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, enacted in the wake of the 1973–74 oil “embargo” imposed by the Arab members of the…
February 19, 2020
The FERC Minimum Price Order and Federalism
In the Beltway, no inefficient policy deed goes unrewarded. That is an eternal truth illustrated well by the expansion of federal powers—at the expense of state and local authority—attendant upon efforts to ameliorate the adverse effects of prior policies to favor one set of energy technologies over others. The latest example of this dynamic is a recent order from…
December 20, 2019
ExxonMobil and the Politicization of Law Enforcement in New York
The New York Supreme Court announced its landmark decision earlier this month in the first climate change-related securities lawsuit—“People of the State of New York v. Exxon Mobil Corporation”—to be tried to a verdict in the U.S. On December 10, Justice Barry Ostrager ruled that the New York Attorney General had failed, even under a…
December 3, 2019
Another Round of Energy Pork
Christmas is upon us, and the elves are busy in the North Pole suburb of Capitol Hill. The House has produced a draft piece of “green energy” legislation that would yield massive costs, massive economic distortions and massive environmental damage. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-California, justifies his “Growing Renewable Energy and Efficiency Now (GREEN) Act,” as…
November 13, 2019
The Long and Winding Saudi Aramco Initial Public Offering Road
The initial public offering (IPO) for up to 5 percent of the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Aramco) has been delayed several times recently, ostensibly due to a seeming difference of opinion about the value of Aramco between the House of Saud ($2 trillion) and the larger investment market (substantially less than that). The IPO will…