Michael Shellenberger: Why Biden Favors Foreign Over American Oil

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Michael Shellenberger hits the nail on the head yet again.

Biden today offered U.S. oil producers $70/barrel to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. His aides reportedly offered OPEC+ $80 last month.

President Joe Biden today announced that he would buy oil from U.S. oil companies for $70 per barrel, significantly less than his aides reportedly offered OPEC+.

This afternoon President Joe Biden announced the sale of 15 million additional barrels of oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and his intention to release more oil this winter. “I have been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices since Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused these price hikes.”

But what he said is simply not true. Biden has leased less public land and off-shore waters than any president since World War II. He killed the re-opening of a major oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And by releasing more oil from the SPR than any president in American history, Biden has repressed private sector investment in oil and gas production. After all, what’s the point in producing more oil and gas if the president of the United States, who has repeatedly promised to “end fossil fuel,” undercuts you in the market?

Biden’s policies are not the only reason for high gasoline prices. Refinery capacity in the U.S. has been declining for decades. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led President Biden in March to ban Russian oil and natural gas imports into the U.S. And despite strenuous efforts by the Biden administration, OPEC+ oil-producing nations decided to cut oil production earlier this month.

But President Biden's policies are the leading cause of the lack of supply and resulting high prices of oil and gasoline. The U.S. produces more oil in a single day than what it imported from Russia in February. Part of the reason OPEC+ cut production was Biden’s constant SPR releases. And Biden and his party had been blocking the expansion of oil refinery capacity for nearly two decades.

Moreover, Biden said he would buy oil from American producers to refill the SPR only when the price drops to $70 per barrel or lower. But last month, Biden’s aides quietly offered to buy OPEC+ oil at $80 per barrel. And, over the last year, the Biden administration has pleaded with Saudi Arabia to produce more oil and lifted some sanctions on Venezuela.

Meanwhile, when asked if Biden had met, or considered meeting with, oil and gas executives, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed he had not. “The Department of Energy has had several meetings with oil companies about what we can do to lower prices,” said Jean-Pierre. “And some White House officials have attended those meetings as well.” And Biden again today attacked American oil companies.

Why is that? Why is Biden’s wrath disproportionately focused inward?

https://michaelshellenberger.substa..._id=79436341&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
 
Primavera said:
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Michael Shellenberger hits the nail on the head yet again.

Biden today offered U.S. oil producers $70/barrel to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. His aides reportedly offered OPEC+ $80 last month.

President Joe Biden today announced that he would buy oil from U.S. oil companies for $70 per barrel, significantly less than his aides reportedly offered OPEC+.

This afternoon President Joe Biden announced the sale of 15 million additional barrels of oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and his intention to release more oil this winter. “I have been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices since Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused these price hikes.”

But what he said is simply not true. Biden has leased less public land and off-shore waters than any president since World War II. He killed the re-opening of a major oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And by releasing more oil from the SPR than any president in American history, Biden has repressed private sector investment in oil and gas production. After all, what’s the point in producing more oil and gas if the president of the United States, who has repeatedly promised to “end fossil fuel,” undercuts you in the market?

Biden’s policies are not the only reason for high gasoline prices. Refinery capacity in the U.S. has been declining for decades. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led President Biden in March to ban Russian oil and natural gas imports into the U.S. And despite strenuous efforts by the Biden administration, OPEC+ oil-producing nations decided to cut oil production earlier this month.

But President Biden's policies are the leading cause of the lack of supply and resulting high prices of oil and gasoline. The U.S. produces more oil in a single day than what it imported from Russia in February. Part of the reason OPEC+ cut production was Biden’s constant SPR releases. And Biden and his party had been blocking the expansion of oil refinery capacity for nearly two decades.

Moreover, Biden said he would buy oil from American producers to refill the SPR only when the price drops to $70 per barrel or lower. But last month, Biden’s aides quietly offered to buy OPEC+ oil at $80 per barrel. And, over the last year, the Biden administration has pleaded with Saudi Arabia to produce more oil and lifted some sanctions on Venezuela.

Meanwhile, when asked if Biden had met, or considered meeting with, oil and gas executives, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed he had not. “The Department of Energy has had several meetings with oil companies about what we can do to lower prices,” said Jean-Pierre. “And some White House officials have attended those meetings as well.” And Biden again today attacked American oil companies.

Why is that? Why is Biden’s wrath disproportionately focused inward?

https://michaelshellenberger.substa..._id=79436341&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
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But what he said is simply not true. Biden has leased less public land and off-shore waters than any president since World War II. He killed the re-opening of a major oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And by releasing more oil from the SPR than any president in American history, Biden has repressed private sector investment in oil and gas production. After all, what’s the point in producing more oil and gas if the president of the United States, who has repeatedly promised to “end fossil fuel,” undercuts you in the market?
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banks are trying to divest "carbon heavy "industries- meaning fossil fuels
U.S. Banks and Climate Risk: Action is Required
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c280803f-5ca0-440e-9914-dc12b72557b3
Unprepared financial institutions will suffer reduced valuations across a wide range of assets such as carbon-intensive energy and transportation, commercial and residential real-estate exposed to extreme weather events, agriculture at risk of decreasing yields, and increasing weather variability.

No region or geographic area is safe from the devastating effects of climate change. :eek: In the Southeast, coastal property damages are already costing insurers billions, and in the Midwest, agricultural yields will face increasingly steep declines.

Changing demand for products based on carbon footprint will lower collateral coverage, increase the probability of default, and ultimately lead to credit and valuation write-offs. The reduced asset valuations can have a contagion effect as banks attempt to decrease their exposure by offering these ‘stranded assets’ at fire-sale prices. Previous events, such as the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown have catalyzed financial collapses and those are on a much smaller scale than climate change.

Indirect exposure to climate risk matters
 
The Revolution is draining the reserve and it will not be refilled if they have anything to say about it. It looks all the world like the Chinese already run the place.
 
Oil refineries are making a windfall. Why do they keep closing?
Companies see only headaches on the horizon for refineries, undercutting the White House push to boost production
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/20/refineries-profit-gas-prices

Oil refineries across the country are being retired and converted to other uses as owners balk at making costly upgrades and America’s pivot away from fossil fuels leaves their future uncertain.
The downsizing comes despite painfully high gasoline prices and as demand globally ramps up amid sanctions on gasoline and diesel produced in Russia, the third-biggest petroleum refiner in the world, behind the United States and China.

Five refineries have shut down in the United States in just the past two years, reducing the nation’s refining capacity by about 5 percent and eliminating more than 1 million barrels of fuel per day from the market, leaving the remaining facilities straining to meet demand.
Yet even at this lucrative moment for what’s left of the refining industry, a White House desperate to bring down gas prices is having little success persuading owners to expand operations, and more closures are imminent.
The futility of the White House effort came through in the response to letters

President Biden sent this week to the nation’s major oil companies, chastising them for squeezing “historically high profit margins” out of their refineries. “At a time of war, refinery profit margins well above normal being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable,” Biden wrote. Biden threatened to invoke emergency powers if the companies don’t bring prices down.

The companies are unmoved. The profits follow years of heavy losses at many facilities after demand plunged during the pandemic. Unpredictable shifts in oil markets had created a challenging business climate before that. Even at this moment of windfall refinery earnings, when the profit margin on each barrel of oil processed has jumped from a dollar or two a year ago to as much as $18 today, investors are hardly jumping at the opportunity to enter the sector. They fear the profits are short lived
. The administration’s environmental priorities — as well as rising public and corporate concern about climate change — would make many refineries obsolete in the not-too-distant future.
 
Building and upgrading the mammoth structures is a messy, expensive undertaking that can drag on longer than a decade, strain the finances of even the biggest fossil fuel giants and run the risk of getting abandoned before that investment is returned.

“I don’t think you are ever going to see a refinery built again in this country,” Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said in an interview with The Washington Post this month.

“It’s been 50 years since we built a new one,” Wirth said.
“In a country where the policy environment is trying to reduce demand for these products, you are not going to find companies to put billions and billions of dollars into this.”
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Some of the nation’s 129 refineries are owned by large oil companies such as Chevron, while others are operated independently. At the facilities, the components of crude oil are separated and processed into fuel for vehicles and planes, as well as industrial petroleum products such as lubricants.

The last major refinery to come online in the United States, in 1977, is the one owned by Marathon Oil in Garyville, La. It is capable of pumping out 578,000 barrels per day. Since it opened, more than half the refineries in the United States have closed.
 
While the Biden administration says market manipulation by Big Oil is behind the shortage of refined fuel right now, the major fossil fuel companies don’t have a monopoly on production.
There is a large refining facility in Houston up for sale right now.

“If there was someone out there who believed this would be a strong business in the future, this is an asset they could buy,” said Jacques Rousseau, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm.

The problem: Nobody wants to buy it. There has not been a single viable bid.

In the absence of any offers, LyondellBasell plans to shut its 700-acre operation on the Gulf Coast no later than the end of next year. Quitting the refining business, the company said in a statement, “is the best strategic and financial path forward.”
“These are aging physical plants where steel needs to be replaced, equipment needs to be overhauled, new pumps maybe needed,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.

“Just getting the equipment you need could take three years. Electric vehicles might already make up 20 percent of the car market by then. You could find yourself investing a bunch of cash to rebuild a refinery that may not be needed for long.”

The White House would have to take extreme steps to compel companies to refine more right now. That could involve Biden invoking emergency powers to curb exports of refined gasoline and diesel or to force companies to restart operations at idled American refineries, according to a memo ClearView sent clients.
 
The case of the shuttered Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery illustrates how little influence the White House has over such operations.

The Trump administration had worked aggressively to keep the plant that was churning out 335,000 barrels of fuel per day from closing, warning it played an important role in U.S. energy security and independence. The White House had dispatched Peter Navarro, a top Trump economic adviser, to try to help advance the bid of a group of energy executives who planned to rehabilitate the bankrupt facility.

The bid, which had the backing of organized labor, fizzled.

Fire broke out at a Philadelphia refinery after several massive explosions on June 21. There were no immediate reports of injuries, authorities said.
The city was emerging from the trauma of a refinery explosion that sent an enormous fireball over the area and catapulted large pieces of machinery throughout the property. A 38,000-pound fragment of the plant was hurled across the river by the explosion. Nobody was killed, but 3,271 pounds of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid leaked into the community. It can cause lung damage and severe skin burns, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The explosion was triggered by a pipe that had not been inspected since 1973. It was so corroded that the pipe’s metal had become thinner than a credit card, according to investigators from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. The board noted that such corrosion had been the culprit in earlier refinery explosions in California and Utah, and “it’s just a matter of time” before another such explosion at a refinery leads to fatalities or contamination of a community.

The Philadelphia refinery had already fallen into bankruptcy the year before it was engulfed by fire. New pipelines from the North Dakota Bakken region and the Permian Basin in Texas had begun pumping crude directly to Gulf Coast and Midwest refineries. Those refineries could then afford to sell their products much more cheaply than the Philadelphia facility, which could access the North Dakota and Texas crude only through rail car shipments.
 
dukkha said:
While the Biden administration says market manipulation by Big Oil is behind the shortage of refined fuel right now, the major fossil fuel companies don’t have a monopoly on production.
There is a large refining facility in Houston up for sale right now.

“If there was someone out there who believed this would be a strong business in the future, this is an asset they could buy,” said Jacques Rousseau, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm.

The problem: Nobody wants to buy it. There has not been a single viable bid.

In the absence of any offers, LyondellBasell plans to shut its 700-acre operation on the Gulf Coast no later than the end of next year. Quitting the refining business, the company said in a statement, “is the best strategic and financial path forward.”
“These are aging physical plants where steel needs to be replaced, equipment needs to be overhauled, new pumps maybe needed,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.

“Just getting the equipment you need could take three years. Electric vehicles might already make up 20 percent of the car market by then. You could find yourself investing a bunch of cash to rebuild a refinery that may not be needed for long.”

The White House would have to take extreme steps to compel companies to refine more right now. That could involve Biden invoking emergency powers to curb exports of refined gasoline and diesel or to force companies to restart operations at idled American refineries, according to a memo ClearView sent clients.
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As the Revolution has said consistently for years they want oil and gas products to be expensive, they have no intention of doing anything about the refinery shortage, which is getting worse in a hurry.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
As the Revolution has said consistently for years they want oil and gas products to be expensive, they have no intention of doing anything about the refinery shortage, which is getting worse in a hurry.
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what the WAPO article doesnt say is the enviornmental Whac -a Doodles and their lawsuits also stop refineries

Center for Bio-Diversity
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/n...fornia-biofuel-refinery-expansion-2022-05-16/
LOS ANGELES— Environmental justice and conservation groups sued the city of Paramount, California today over its approval of a biofuel refinery expansion without adequate environmental review.

Texas environmentalists plan lawsuit against Valero for pollution
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...it-against-valero-for-pollution-idUSKCN1SS237
Environment Texas, the Sierra Club and the Port Arthur Community Action Network allege over 600 violations of pollution limits by the release of hazardous chemicals like sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and particulates from the refinery since 2014.

A Valero spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment.

The lawsuit would be filed under a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows citizens to sue in federal court when government agencies have failed to halt pollution. Plaintiffs must first provide a 60-day notice to the companies and agencies of the planned lawsuit.
 
dukkha said:
what the WAPO article doesnt say is the enviornmental Whac -a Doodles and their lawsuits also stop refineries

Center for Bio-Diversity
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/n...fornia-biofuel-refinery-expansion-2022-05-16/
LOS ANGELES— Environmental justice and conservation groups sued the city of Paramount, California today over its approval of a biofuel refinery expansion without adequate environmental review.

Texas environmentalists plan lawsuit against Valero for pollution
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...it-against-valero-for-pollution-idUSKCN1SS237
Environment Texas, the Sierra Club and the Port Arthur Community Action Network allege over 600 violations of pollution limits by the release of hazardous chemicals like sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and particulates from the refinery since 2014.

A Valero spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment.

The lawsuit would be filed under a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows citizens to sue in federal court when government agencies have failed to halt pollution. Plaintiffs must first provide a 60-day notice to the companies and agencies of the planned lawsuit.
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Drive up the price a ton, blame the oil companies, and then nationalize the oil companies maybe so that they can control who gets what and at what price.

This is an awesome way to hurt enemies of the Revolution.
 
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