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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…
January 29, 2020
Reform of the National Environmental Policy Act
The Trump administration proposed earlier this month a reform of the implementing regulations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law enacted 50 years ago. The implementing regulations last were updated in 1978, a fact that might have induced many supporters (“environmentalists”) of the “bedrock environmental law” to consider, however briefly, whether such a modernization might…
January 21, 2020
Camels and Livestock and Methane, Oh My
As night follows day, my recent post on the near-zero climate effect of the methane emitted by feral camels in Australia elicited a torrent of criticism from all the usual suspects, in full stampede to be the first and most vociferous in terms of condemnations of yours truly. A denier. A tool of the fossil-fuel industry. A…
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…
November 12, 2019
Point: Trump Is Absolutely Correct to Withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement
One number is needed to illustrate the absurdity that is the Paris climate agreement: 0.17 degree Celsius. That is the temperature reduction in 2100 attendant upon the Paris greenhouse gas emissions reduction, which is the simple sum of the promises (“Nationally Determined Contributions”) made by the participating countries. The U.S. contribution to that “achievement”: 0.015…
November 11, 2019
Massachusetts’ Lawsuit Against ExxonMobil Brings New Meaning to Silly
Attorneys General are supposed to enforce the rule of law. They are not supposed to use lawsuits to achieve policy outcomes not enacted by the legislature. They are not supposed to pick targets that are politically unpopular and then try to find some hammer with which to attack them. They are not supposed to transform…
November 1, 2019
Is the IPCC Embarrassed or Phobic About Sustainable Development Goal 13?
I wrote recently about the new report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released as a “Summary for Policymakers” of “Global Warming of 1.5°C,” a deeply politicized document that makes the following central arguments: I discussed all the reasons why this new report is not to be taken seriously, but I confess that I made a…