Posted on 08/14/2024 6:51:26 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Among the great mythologies of recent years, one stands out above the rest, is that the world is in a “great energy transition.” Actually, the world IS in a dramatic energy transition. But it isn’t the one the Left wants it to be.
Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at wind and solar power, we still get less than 10% of our energy from green sources. The needle really hasn’t moved at all over the past two decades. The more the government spends, the less we get per taxpayer dollar thrown at it. That’s the very definition of a falling stock.
The REAL energy transition is toward natural gas. A few weeks ago, the price of natural gas fell below $2 per MMBTU, the lowest price level for energy, after adjusting for inflation, in 20 years and probably ever in the history of mankind. Just a few years ago, the price in real dollars was four times higher.
As an experiment, I went to the grocery store to find out what a 16-ounce bottle of Evian water now sells at. The price I saw was $2.69 and can go as high as $3. This means natural gas is now less expensive than water.
This natural gas revolution has happened because of modern drilling technologies – including horizontal drilling and fracking. That technology keeps getting better and better and will continue to keep the price low for many decades to come. The pace of drilling technology improvement far outpaces the pace of depletion. In other words, for all intents and purposes, America’s natural gas supplies are limitless – a bottomless well.
Meanwhile, natural gas has all the attributes of a wonder fuel. It is abundant, made in America, clean-burning (using natural gas REDUCES carbon emissions), reliable and cheap.
(Excerpt) Read more at amac.us ...
The left wants scarcity and rationing. Cheap and plentiful is NOT what they want.
The US set a new record for oil production in 2023. Looks like we will break it in 2024. Great to see so much domestic energy production occurring.
Quickly ... somebody must advise PG&E that natural gas is at “the lowest price level ... in 20 years and probably ever in the history of mankind.” The utility doesn’t appear to be aware of this!
NG is insanely cheap. It could fuel a booming economy if the left was not so anti industry.
Yep, and now that it is "cheaper" the Left wants to ban it saying it's not clean energy, sheesh.
He shouldn’t compare raw commodity natural gas prices with retail premium brand bottled water. He should either compare with the cost of tap water, or compare no name bottled water with the cost of propane tanks.
Energy IS the economy
The great irony is - America’s energy abundance, which exists in spite of the left, nonetheless funds all their woke social-engineering schemes and bloated Fed.gov. Biden and Harris practically only exist because of it. Sheer dumb luck for them
The United States WILL BE the leader in petroleum production IN THE WORLD and there is nothing the liberals can do about it.
I always get confused because the left does not consider nuclear power to be clean green energy.
Nuclear power plants produce zero of the dreaded Greenhouse gases. Yet the left has really used their muscle to restrict new nuclear plants being built.
And with all this going on the left wants us all to drive electric cars. ,But then, we don’t have the electrical generating capacity to recharge hundreds of millions of vehicles overnight.
Even if we could magically have a mostly electric vehicle Fleet in this country,, we do not have the ability as of right now to recharge all those vehicles in a timely manner
Not a fair comparison, because you don’t buy natural gas by the 12 oz bottle at the store.
Compare the cost of 100 cubic feet of natural gas to the cost of 100 cubic feet of water, as they are delivered to your home via underground piping, and you’ll find water is much, much cheaper than natural gas.
I just tell them to talk to Elon, you wanna know about burning fossil fuels at an astounding rate, he’s your guy.
True. But natural gas is cheaper than coal per mmBTU.
My water is FREE.
I’ll take as much of that Nat gas as you can deliver (along with the minus $$$/ cu meter charge, of course)
NG is a dicey matter.
Every once in a while I post a link to the bible of energy that is released by BP (they outsourced to a proxy of late) that lists country by country reserves and production of oil, gas, coal . . . whatever. They have done this every June for about 70 yrs.
The US NG reserves are about 12.7 trillion cubic meters. That includes shale estimates.
This is not a huge number as such things go. The big kahuna of NG is Russia at 32+ Tcm. Then Iran and Qatar share that huge gas field underneath the Persian Gulf and are both in the 20s Tcm.
The frown inducer is production. The US is extracting about 1 Tcm from the ground each year. It gets domestically consumed or a small portion of that is exported.
So 12ish Tcm in the ground and taking out 1 Tcm per year. How can this be good?
The kneejerk is to rage that yeah I’ve heard it is running out for decades. It’s all bullshit — which is a conclusion that must necessarily think it is somehow infinite.
Were that so, or even considered possible, BP would not be publishing annual numbers.
Will more be found? Yes. The big source of “more” has been shale. It was always known to be there, but only low interest rates starting about 2012 enabled fracking to get underway flowing oil — and with that oil, gas flowed too. But this is not forever. It’s simply not.
Here’s the link.
Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy
The Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy™ analyses data on world energy markets from the prior year. Previously produced by bp, the Review has been providing timely, comprehensive and objective data to the energy community since 1952.
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
There is both a .pdf and lower in the scroll a button that says Download The Data. That Download button is for a spreadsheet that any Excel reader can access. If you care at all about all this, get this annual data.
Not on a $/BTU basis it isn’t.
>> Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at wind and solar power, we still get less than 10% of our energy from green sources. The needle really hasn’t moved at all over the past two decades. <<
The basic argument, that natural gas has resulted in lower fuel prices, is partly true. But this sentence (above) is fundamentally false. As I keep telling liberals, conservatives don’t believe how economically feasible solar power is because they’ve been lied to about it for so many decades. But despite (not BECAUSE of) government intervention, solar power is sensible now.
Solar has grown ten-fold. At first, its growth merely made up for enviroweenies hampering other green technology, like hydroelectric and nuclear. But it’s now a full 5% of our electrical generation, and set to increase another ten-fold over the next decade or so, unless the Saudis manipulate a coalition of right-wing Luddites and left-wing enviroweenies to kill off storage.
What an absolutely stupid comparison.
You cannot compare $/0.5 gallon to $/million BTU. It’s just a coincidence that the numbers come out around the same.
The author should try $/microliter versus $/Watt-hour to see if they are similar.
I’m guessing the author isn’t an engineer nor did he study Dimensional Analysis.
</pedantic>
Cleaner than battery power and the Communists refuse it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
