October 7th, 2022

• Natural Gas is the most affordable, clean, efficient, and reliable fuel on earth. TEA
• Kansas City UPS trucks now run on natural gas. KMBC
• China rerouting LNG to Europe at a profit. WSJ
• Ford gets $205M in incentives for EV plant in Ohio. Cleveland Business
• Texas leaders shut out renewables in their grid plan. Texas Monthly
• Gov. Newsom calls for tax on ‘windfall’ profits. California Globe
• WH considering easing sanctions on Venezuela for more oil. WSJ

The OPEC Plus coalition voted Wednesday to drastically cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day. The massive reduction marks a major turnaround in policy for the oil producers’ group, which includes Russia as a key player.

President Biden is calling the action “a hostile act.” That’s interesting, since it was his policies that have made America more vulnerable to OPEC and Russia. The aggressive move also is worsening fears of a global recession, analysts say.

• Energy independence equals national security. This is why we should not rely on foreign sources of energy, and instead produce our own. Processing and using affordable, clean and abundant natural gas helps lessen our dependence on OPEC and the Saudis.
• The U.S. has had several critical energy infrastructure projects blocked or withdrawn due to bureaucratic red tape.
• The Keystone XL pipeline alone would have delivered 830,000 barrels of oil per day.
• Gasoline prices certainly will rise again once the Saudis slash production. But Biden’s policies mean that U.S. production likely won’t be able to make up the difference. He did this instead in the wake of the cuts.

The Biden administration waged a failed last-minute push to convince Middle Eastern allies not to dramatically cut oil production, according to senior officials. The release of roughly 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. petroleum reserves was expected to end Oct. 31. Biden went to Saudi Arabia and begged OPEC not to make cuts and now, with them not budging, he is releasing our reserves.

He and the “green-at-all-costs” Democrats are to blame for high gasoline prices and now — right before the midterm elections — they are desperate for a quick fix.

Biden’s war on America’s energy industry, starting on day one with the cancellation of the Keystone XL, has taken the country in the wrong direction. He is doubling-down and draining our SPR in an attempt to cover up for his policy missteps.

Bottom Line: The U.S. could incentivize more domestic production to offset the cuts. And we could move toward being truly energy independent by unleashing domestic natural gas production. That would require opening more pipelines and easing restrictions across the board.

Producing clean energy apparently is so environmentally destructive that we can’t produce it in this country. A few historical facts:

• In 1952, Mountain Pass opened and supplied rare earths for the electronic needs of the Cold War economy. A half-century later the mine was defunct. You may ask, “Why?” In the eyes of the U.S. government and major manufacturers, it no longer made sense to acquire rare earths from a U.S. source subject to stringent environmental regulations.
• Instead, the hard business of extracting useful minerals was exported to other countries, where environmental damage was safely out of sight. China happily obliged, allowing environmental harm to proliferate so long as the costs of rare earth mining were kept down.
• By 2017, the Chinese had won the Environmental Social & Governance battle, and Mountain Pass began sending U.S.-mined rare earth concentrate to China for processing.

Why does China dominate the renewable energy supply chain? Because producing renewables is so environmentally destructive that it would be illegal under U.S. environmental regulations. As a consequence, we export it to countries like China, where the destruction can’t be seen and there are zero environmental regulations and little or no restrictions on forced or child labor.

Bottom Line:  Ironically, it is the Green Movement that is responsible for shutting domestic mining down completely. The U.S. could be leading the world in rare earth mining and dominating the global renewable supply chain, but the environmental drawbacks are just too great … so we let China do it instead. Natural gas is the cleaner, safer, American option.

Gas prices are fluctuating across the nation, with prices on the rise in the South and on the East Coast, and on the decline on the West Coast. Refinery issues caused prices to spike in California, but have now been addressed. The announcement from OPEC is putting upward pressure on prices in the southeast.

Right now, the national average sits at $3.89, up 9 cents from this time last week. Oil expert Patrick De Haan predicts that the national average will ultimately increase somewhere between 15 and 30 cents as a result of the OPEC production cuts. If only we had a President who would increase domestic production to offset it!

Congress is in recess so nothing on the calendar for next week!

“With gas prices still at historic highs, I would champion policies that increase biofuels production in Iowa, lower gas prices, make our country energy independent again, and end our reliance on foreign oil.”

— Congressman Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa), DoEI signer

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