The good news is that the U.S. finally agreed Friday to help Europe replace Russia as its main natural gas supplier. The bad news is that President Biden is still telling U.S. gas producers he wants to put them out of business. [bold, links added]
It sounds crazy but listen to Mr. Biden’s remarks Friday. “We’re going to have to make sure the families in Europe can get through this winter and the next,” he said in announcing the deal to provide 15 billion cubic meters of gas this year, though not all from the U.S.
But he added “at the same time, this crisis also presents an opportunity” that will “drive the investments we need to double-down on our clean energy goals and accelerate progress toward our net-zero emissions future.”
The White House underlined the contradiction by saying the U.S. “will maintain its regulatory environment.” More U.S. LNG exports will only be permitted to the extent they reduce emissions—for instance, by running on “clean energy.”
This is magical thinking. Liquefying gas requires long-term investment and reliable power. Facilities can’t run on intermittent renewables, and companies won’t invest billions of dollars if they think regulators will kill them once a crisis passes.
The reality today is the U.S. doesn’t have enough LNG export capacity to replace the 170 billion or so cubic meters that Russia sends Europe every year.
Much of the 124 bcm/year of exports that the U.S. can technically ship is tied up in long-term contracts with Asia.
But EQT CEO Toby Rice said this month he thinks the U.S. gas exports could “easily” replace Russian supply over a matter of years, and the U.S. has the potential to quadruple its gas production by 2030. EQT is the largest U.S. natural gas producer.
One major obstacle is a shortage of pipeline capacity. Several large pipelines and LNG export projects have been scrapped in recent years amid opposition from progressive states and green groups.
It can take four to five years to get a federal permit for a pipeline that can be built in six to nine months. The Trump Administration accelerated permitting, but Biden regulators have slow-rolled approvals.
Two applications to increase LNG exports sat at the Energy Department for more than two years.
They were finally approved two weeks ago as the Administration scrambled to supply Europe with more gas. But that was too late to help this winter.
Europe long resisted signing long-term contracts for U.S. LNG because Russia provided cheap gas. This hampered U.S. investment in LNG export facilities and is one reason there are 13 approved terminals that could ship 258 billion cubic meters each year that still aren’t under construction.
Most were approved in the Trump years.
Now Europe is finally agreeing to long-term contracts, but the Administration says it opposes long-term U.S. gas investment.
Listen to no less a power player than Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate adviser, this week.
U.S. climate policy “is not a fight about coal anymore. It is a challenge about natural gas and infrastructure investments because we don’t want to invest in things that are time-limited. Because we are time-limited,” she said at an American Council on Renewable Energy forum.
What sane CEO is going to invest with Ms. McCarthy holding the sword of “time-limited” over his head?
There’s a reason the Energy Department’s LNG export permits are good through 2050. It can take decades to recoup the investment.
At least Europe is finally reckoning with its climate and energy follies. The European Commission this week committed to streamlining regulations to fast-track LNG import projects.
Germany is planning to extend the life of its coal plants, and the U.K. is embracing oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Too bad the Biden Administration is still living in la-la land.
h/t Steve B.
Read more at WSJ
Just like the idiots who back traffic over this whole Global Warming Climate Change Scam keeping the Motorists idling their engines and wasting their time all over a totaly fake Crisis
There is one fuel that most people have never heard of. -Thorium. It’s abundant – here in the UK there’s lots of it all over, particularly in Wales and in Cornwall. It’s easily and cheaply mined and it’s very safe to use. It doesn’t harm the environment in any way. It could provide the whole world’s energy requirements for thousands of years to come.
Sound too good to be true?
Mostly, things that sound too good to be true usually turn out to be not so good after all. This is the exception. It’s not for nothing that Thorium has been dubbed “the miracle fuel”.
Thorium is a silvery metal, a bit like lead. It exists in huge quantities in the Earth, all over the world. Like uranium in it’s natural state, it’s very slightly radioactive, but you could carry a pound of it around in your pocket without any danger. It’s not a new find; it was discovered in oxide form by Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius in 1828. He named it for the Norse god of thunder, Thor.
It stayed just an interesting discovery for sixty-two years, until Austrian chemist Carl von Welsbach discovered that when Thorium oxide was heated, it gave off a very bright light, which led to the development of a gas mantle that quickly came into universal use. Then electricity made the gas mantle obsolete and little was heard of Thorium until half way through the Second World War, when the Americans started experimenting with radioactive metals in their search for atomic weapons at Oak Ridge.
The town of Oak Ridge was established by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1942 on farmland in rural Tennessee. A research facility was set up called the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). It’s primary focus was to create a nuclear reactor that would produce plutonium for an atomic bomb. The endeavour to create the bomb was called The Manhattan Project, because most of the work was done at ten sites in Manhattan.
The reactor was built, the plutonium was delivered and in 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated.
Alvin Weinberg had joined ORNL in 1941. He was part of the team that developed the world’s first nuclear reactor. Appointed Director in 1945, he was keenly aware of the destructive power of the by-product of his reactor, plutonium. While developing reactors for America’s power, he also investigated various other methods of nuclear reaction, among them one using Thorium as a fuel. By 1966, a Thorium reactor was built; it operated successfully, safely and cheaply for three years. It’s waste products however, were no good for atomic bombs.
Nixon was elected president of the USA in 1969. He favoured a different type of reactor for the nation’s power. The Thorium reactor was shut down. Weinberg continued to advocate safer forms of reactor, including a thorium one; for this, Nixon fired him in 1972.
Had Weinberg been allowed to continue the development of the Thorium reactor, by now the whole world might have evaded the stranglehold of the cartel of oil-producing countries, OPEC; there would never have been costly, fruitless attempts to develop renewable energy, no more ‘green’ taxes pushing household energy bills ever higher, creating a luxury out of a necessity. There could be cheap, safe, clean energy available to the whole world.
For the sacking of Weinberg and the shutting down of the first Thorium reactor, Nixon could be said to have left the worst legacy for future generations than any single person who ever lived. Ever.
Nixon isn’t the only short-sighted one.
The UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) has declared:
2010: ”NNL believes that the Thorium fuel cycle does not currently
Have a role to play in the UK”.
2014: “Our conclusion is that the Thorium fuel cycle has only limited
reference to the UK”.
One can only hope that they come to their senses sometime soon.
In the meantime, check out some of the advantages of Thorium:
• When Thorium is found – and it’s easily mined – all of it can be used to create power, unlike uranium, where only 0.7% of it can be used and then only after separating out the useful bits in a huge, expensive centrifuge.
• One ton of Thorium has the energy potential of a million tons of coal.
• A Thorium reactor does not need the massive shielding and cooling that a uranium plant requires.
• Eventually, a small Thorium reactor could be in a large warehouse, providing power for a medium-sized town at a fraction of the cost of present methods (unless the government taxes it!); uranium-powered nuclear reactors can only operate in very large plants.
• Once it gets going, a Thorium reactor runs by itself, needing only regular inspection. A uranium reactor requires hundreds of staff constantly monitoring it 24/7.
• A Thorium reactor cannot melt down. Were it to over-heat for any reason, a plug in the bottom of the reactor would melt, the fluid would drain into secure storage jars and the nuclear reaction would simply stop.
• A Thorium reactor can use some of the waste from other reactors; not only that, but it can actually re-use its own waste, making it truly inexhaustible.
• Thorium waste has a half-life of around 300 years, compared to millions of years for uranium waste.
• The concerns about fuel security and the probability of run-out in the near future has prompted renewed interest in Thorium. The Chinese have a working reactor and are poised to commission many more. A Japanese consortium is developing one in Norway. Several other countries are developing Thorium reactors. Sadly, not the UK.
• The big plus for Thorium is that it’s cheap; widespread of use of Thorium could cut energy bills by 90%. For ever.
There are a few things that need to be clarified regarding Thorium. First, Thorium is not fissile (like U235 or Pu239. Problem with Uranium is that >99% of it is U238 which is not fissile and it is very costly to enrich the Uranium to U235 for a usable reactor fuel (US Navy nuke plants are very highly enriched to make reactors compact and long-lived–I was a reactor operator on our subs)
Regarding Thorium as a fuel, all of natural Thorium is Th232. If it is bombarded with neutrons Th232 will become Th233 and after a couple of fairly short half-lives it decays to U233 which, like U235, is fissile. So there’s no need for expensive enrichment and as you say Thorium is plentiful. There was a commercial reactor in Colorado called the St Vrain Nuclear Plant outside Plattesville, CO. It actually used the Thorium lifecycle and proved that Thorium could be used as a source of creating fissile material. And with the new molten salt fuel designs it becomes even less likely that there can be a nuclear accident.
Europe is slowly waking up to the fact that they have been played by the globalist as naive fools like mice following pied piper off the cliff to destruction.
We need to wake up in USA also. With conventional energy production the need for importing any LNG would be quite low but Europe went full force into the big lie regarding human caused global warming… uhh climate change which is non existent outside of normal fluctuations caused by various astronomical factors and Europe is scrambling to get real again.
EUROPE! Say NO to the globalist elite that want to destroy you!
USA! Say NO to the globalist elite that want to kill you!
If you have any doubts… Look up the Georgia guide stone.
Rats not Mice