The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: natural gas production
Biden takes credit for falling gas prices

As Gas Prices Fall, Republicans Are Lying About Joe Biden's Energy Policy

President Joe Biden "shut down American energy," Rep. Steve Scalise hollered with great confidence. The Louisiana Republican was nominating Kevin McCarthy for House speaker when he appended some commentary unburdened by facts.

Scalise painted a sad, sad picture of American families "who can't even afford to put gas in their tanks." They can't "make it to the grocery store because we have such horrible energy policy," he said.

The evidence fails to support the melodrama. "National gas prices drop to 18-month low," Forbes reported on Dec. 20, "and could hit $3 By Christmas."

In Louisiana, a gallon of regular now averages $2.90. This reality may be spied in the prices hanging outside Baton Rouge gas stations. And if we're not mistaken, Biden is still president.

Scalise went on to warn of threats to our energy security. "There's absolutely no reason that we need to rely on foreign countries to produce our energy," he stated.

Scalise is right about that. We don't need to rely on others to produce energy. But guess what, we don't.

"Exxon, Chevron Focus on Oil Projects in the Americas," read a Wall Street Journal headline that very day. The growth of U.S. shale has eased Western oil companies' concerns about securing oil, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Exxon is now spending big to raise oil and gas production by 500,000 barrels a day by 2027. It is selling assets in Africa and the Middle East and plans to expand in the Permian Basin of New Mexico and West Texas — and elsewhere in this hemisphere. The U.S. has just granted Chevron a new license to again pump oil in Venezuela.

Measuring energy independence by exports-minus-imports, 2021 saw our highest level of energy independence in history. Biden was president, then, as well.

Is Biden set on moving us to new low-carbon technologies? He is, and Exxon and Chevron say they are planning to expand in that direction, too. We can assume they know the energy business.

Natural gas prices in Europe have fallen below what they were before Russia invaded Ukraine. Fears that cutoffs of Russian energy would freeze much of Europe this winter have not materialized. Why? Because giant ships carrying U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) are sailing to Europe from ports in Louisiana and Texas.

"U.S. LNG has become a foundation for European energy security," said energy historian Daniel Yergin. Warmer weather helped reduce demand, for sure, but American natural gas more than met the demand.

The United States is now the world's biggest producer of natural gas. Cooling it to a liquid state makes it a lot easier to transport long distances.

LNG shipments to Europe more than doubled last year. As a result, gas storage facilities in Germany, once very dependent on Russian natural gas, are now near full. And lower energy prices helped France's inflation rate fall to 6.7 percent.

America's biggest LNG terminal is located near the Sabine Pass River, between Louisiana and Texas. There are others in Louisiana, with more on the way. U.S. exporters enjoyed record revenues in 2022, meanwhile, and expect more of the same this year.

If Scalise and his Republican colleagues limited their complaints to Biden's border policy, they might have had a point. But they kept beefing about rising gas prices that were actually falling — and higher food prices that were also going down. Not distinguishing yesterday's news from today's news is something we've gotten used to. We don't expect much in the way of updates tomorrow.

But Joe Biden is definitely president. And there is zero evidence of his "shutting down" American energy, at least for those of us stuck in the world of reality.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is Joe Biden's energy policy?

Ans: President Joe Biden has outlined a comprehensive energy policy to transition the United States to clean, renewable energy sources while creating jobs and addressing climate change. This includes a plan to invest in energy-efficient infrastructure, electrify the transportation sector, and increase the use of clean energy sources such as wind and solar power.

What has the Republican Party said about Joe Biden's energy policy?

Ans: Some members of the Republican Party have criticized President Biden's energy policy, claiming that it will lead to higher gas prices and harm the economy. However, these claims are not supported by the facts. In reality, gas prices have declined under President Biden, and his energy policy is expected to create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Fracking Boom Is A Struggle For Kentucky

Fracking Boom Is A Struggle For Kentucky

By Sean Cockerham, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The fracking revolution is not being kind to Kentucky’s role as an American energy leader, helping to decimate coal while struggling to deliver a natural gas boom for the state on par with nearby peers.

Kentucky’s natural gas production more than doubled from 2008 to 2009. But the growth largely stalled in recent years, and analysts are saying the state isn’t attracting the same interest from major drillers as its neighbors West Virginia and Ohio.

Kentucky poses challenges that don’t exist for drilling natural gas from the deep underground Marcellus shale rock in West Virginia or the Utica shale in Ohio, said Terry Engelder, an oil and gas industry consultant and geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University. The high pressure of the Marcellus and Utica shales helps in drilling for natural gas because it drives the gas into the wells.

“Only the shallowest of the gas shale layers are found under the surface in Kentucky. These layers don’t have the pressure found in either the Marcellus or Utica,” Engelder said.

There are also concerns that Kentucky shales aren’t as rich in the profitable natural-gas liquids of ethane, butane and propane that drillers are finding elsewhere.

The desire for those liquids is what’s driving the natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, said Brandon Nuttall, an energy and minerals geologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey.

The national fracking boom is wreaking havoc on Eastern Kentucky coal as it struggles to compete against the torrent of cheap natural gas that’s pouring in from states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Utilities took advantage of the low prices by switching from coal to natural gas in recent years. Central Appalachian coal production has dropped nearly 40 percent in the past decade, and thousands have lost jobs.

National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said this week that coal had suffered from a combination of environmental rules and cheap natural gas.

Natural gas prices have gone up of late and Quinn said he saw coal resurgence in the Rocky Mountains, as well as Indiana, Illinois and Western Kentucky. But he’s less optimistic about the Central Appalachian coalfield, which includes the century-old industry that’s shaped the economy of Eastern Kentucky.

Coal there is more expensive to mine and so is especially vulnerable to the rise of natural gas, Quinn said.

“The Central Appalachian coalfield is going to be challenged,” Quinn said at the Deloitte Energy Conference in Washington last week.

West Virginia’s coal industry has suffered as well. That state, though, is in the midst of a natural gas boom.

It’s a different story in Kentucky. The commonwealth saw an enormous increase in natural gas production in 2009, rising in a single year from 114 billion cubic feet to more than 300 billion cubic feet, according to numbers from the Kentucky Geological Survey. But such growth didn’t continue, and production stood at 298.9 billion cubic feet last year.

The price of natural gas has a huge influence on how many wells are drilled and what kinds of shales the oil and gas companies target. Kentucky is likely to see more interest if those prices rise further. The Kentucky Geological Survey is also testing whether the New Albany shale in Western Kentucky might yield the profitable liquids that drillers are pursuing in nearby states.

“We know the shale is there and that it contains natural gas. We don’t know that the New Albany shale contains economic volumes of liquids,” Nuttall said.

Photo: Danielfoster437 via Flickr

Companies Chase Huge Natural Gas Profits, Despite Environmentalists’ Efforts

Environmentalists are still fighting against hydraulic fracturing, but energy companies are nonetheless in a natural gas frenzy.

Proponents of natural gas have argued that it is cleaner than other forms of energy and that the vast stores of natural gas in the United States could radically alter our dependence on foreign oil. Critics say the means of extracting natural gas — including the controversial hydraulic fracturing, in which millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the ground to break the shale and release gas — pose serious environmental and health risks.

Even as legislators in states like New York debate the costs and benefits of extraction methods and how to appropriately regulate the natural gas industry, corporations are taking action to capitalize on what could soon become an even more lucrative market. According to The Wall Street Journal:

One of the nation’s largest operators of natural-gas pipelines is buying a rival for $21.1 billion in cash and stock, making a big bet that natural gas blasted from shale rocks around the country will become a huge force in America’s energy future.

Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan Inc. says that by buying rival El Paso Corp. it will become the largest operator of natural-gas pipelines in the country, and the fourth-largest energy company in the U.S.

The new entity would have a network of 67,000 miles of natural-gas pipelines stretching into virtually every major region where natural gas is produced. It would connect Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Texas, and give Kinder Morgan entry in to Florida, a growing market for gas-fueled power generation.

Combined, the two companies would also be positioned to build new pipelines that will carry natural gas to customers from fields under development from New York to Ohio to Texas. Pipeline companies have been trying to redesign their routes to connect fast-growing markets for gas in the southern U.S. with new sources of natural gas made possible by recent technological advances that make it easier to pull natural gas from rocks far below the earth’s surface.

Sunday’s deal is one of the largest announced this year.

Such deals mean that large energy companies stand to make massive profits from increased natural gas production — a fact that will undoubtedly amplify the political pressure to remove remaining barriers to hydraulic fracturing and other forms of extraction. Environmentalists concerned with the risks of hydraulic fracturing will face an increasingly difficult battle against corporate cash in convincing politicians to limit and regulate natural gas production.