There are forgivable intellectual and policy errors, and then there’s the self-delusion that has driven the West into its dependence on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oil and gas. [bold, links added]
Russia has long been a major supplier of energy to Europe. The depletion of natural gas reserves in the West has played a role in Russia’s increased significance.
Moscow has also benefited, though, from Europe’s deliberate choice to attempt a great leap forward into a green-energy future, especially in Germany, which decided to turn its back on both nuclear and coal.
In taking this route, Europe made a holiday-from-history decision to forget the incredible power of oil, gas, and coal — the most reliable and efficient sources of energy the world has ever known — and ignore the inevitable centrality of energy to geopolitics.
Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate extremist who has been elevated into an oracle of all that is good and true, demanded nothing less.
The world hasn’t embraced fossil fuels out of hatred of the planet but because they are so incredibly useful.
If they didn’t already exist — thanks to sunlight and plants that lived millions of years ago — we would have to invent them. Except we wouldn’t be able to.
Oil is a miracle fuel.
Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress writes that it is “almost eerily engineered by natural processes, not just for cheapness, not just for reliability, not just for scalability, but also for another characteristic crucial to a functional civilization: portability.”
It powers cars, trucks, and jets, without which the modern world as we know it wouldn’t exist.
Coal, too, Epstein notes, is affordable, abundant, and easy to extract and transport. There is a reason that developing nations invariably turn to it to power the industries crucial to economic advancement.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that fossil fuels are still the leading source of global electricity, with coal accounting for 36.7% and gas 23.5%. The total fossil-fuel contribution, at 63.3%, is down only slightly from two decades ago.
In terms of overall energy, fossil fuels are an even larger proportion, 84.3%.
For its part, green energy — wind, solar and other renewables — accounts for around 10% of global electricity and even less of total energy.
Vladimir Putin knew this and understood the power it gave him, even if European policymakers wanted to evade the matter.
Did they not notice that coal was the mainstay of Britain’s rise to global power in the 19th century?
Did they forget the role of oil in World War I and World War II, let alone subsequent 20th-century history?
Petroleum wasn’t particularly useful prior to World War I but by the end of it had become a pillar of national power. It fueled the motorized vehicles and airplanes that utterly transformed warfare.
British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon famously said at the war’s conclusion that the Allies had “floated to victory upon a wave of oil.”
In World War II, Japan attacked the United States in part out of fear that the American oil embargo would starve its war machine, and one reason the Nazis were defeated was that they ran out of fuel.
Of course, the strategic significance of the Middle East is owed almost entirely to its vast oil reserves. The phrase “War for oil” is a cliché and usually a smear, but it is certainly true that no one has ever fought a war for wind.
In light of all this, Europe still chooses to subjugate itself to an anti-Western authoritarian, and even as Russian opera stars are getting canceled, it is hesitant to stop purchases of Russian oil and gas.
Some perspective is called for. While climate change may indeed prove a serious long-term challenge, it is not reducing parts of European cities to rubble or a threat to use as a tactical weapon.
If this horrifying episode hasn’t scared the West straight on energy, nothing will.
Read more at NY Post
Apparently, folks in the Biden Administration don’t read their own government publications. Take the EIA 2022 Energy Outlook as an example: https://www.energyindepth.org/petroleum-and-natural-gas-remain-1-through-2050/
Canceling the Keystone Pipeline was Politics not Science but thats whats behind this whole Global Warming/Climate Change Scam
It is a basic fact that in the far distant past, planet Earth and its vast life processes laid down from biodecay, the carboniferous forests, and processes over huge spans of time, oil and gas. A later product of Earth evolution, humanity, discovered these, and totaly transformed human life, invention, health, longevity, world travel and wider perspectives of he planet, all our sciences. Now, even the basis of life itself, carbon, and CO2 by which all life is possible, are demonised. No further comment, except to say that the fossil fuels we seek to ban are the very means humanity can push forward to new further developments which are truly “green”.
While it’s not widely known, we have a similar situation out here in Australia. Exxon discovered what was a huge petroleum deposit in Bass Strait back in the early 1960’s. Government regulation at the time required it to be developed and produced with the involvement of an Australian company and that was the beginning of BHP Petroleum. So Esso got the green light and has produced huge amounts of oil and gas from that field since. Now in 2022, it’s depleted and is being closed down. You might think the Australian government would be saying, “where’s the replacement for that loss of local production?” WRONG.
Since Esso discovered the Bass Strait deposit, successive governments have been inventing ways of extracting more royalties, taxes, levies [have I missed something?] included pre-payments to conduct seismic surveys and then millions of dollars per test hole drilled, from oil companies. State governments got in on the act as well. Today it is illegal to product oil and gas onshore in Victoria and NSW. Would you believe it?
On the east coast, one 45kg cylinder of propane costs AU$182.00 {45kgs = 100lbs aprox. AU$1 = US$0.75} Summed up, that cylinder of propane cost US$242.55. For us, we use propane for cooking and hot water and this cost is now serious for us as retirees. We can’t just change our house to some other fuel and yes, there is a shortage of propane on the east coast.
NOTE: Australia is one of the largest exports of LNG in the world.
Back to oil production in Australia. During the 1980’s there were around nine oil companies operating in the country. Today 2022, that number is down to a few – Mobil, Shell, BP are the only international companies who have stayed. It is now too expensive and complicated with red and green tape for oil co’s to go looking for new oil and gas. Australia has only two refineries left after six (that I can remember) have shut down. No new refineries are planned for construction and there is no guarantee the two remaining units will be here in five years time. The country has around one month’s supply of fuels in tanks at any given time and the government is doing nothing to effectively change this. Would you believe, we have crude oil reserves – in the US..!! I’d estimate 85% of our petroleum needs are “imported” from Singapore mainly and a few other countries as well. And yes – there will be oil out there, but no oil co is going to risk high upfront costs to end up with dry holes and then if they find oil or gas, to be taxed like no other country, meaning any ROI will be very hard to achieve.
Watching Hannity on Fox a short time ago, Governor Mick Huckabee told him that US pump prices for gas will reach US$5/gal and that’s expensive for Americans. Australians are paying just under AU$2/litre which is equivalent to US$12.09/gal. Prices in New Zealand are even higher.
I’ve been wondering wondering why Australians aren’t protesting in the streets over this, but as you may know, we are a placid lot. That will change when inflation hits us the same as it’s affecting Americans. It’s only a matter of time.
The US is getting a very bad deal from its government at present, but as you will see here, you are not alone. One kicker to finish off – we are in the process of closing our coal fired power stations, with nothing to replace them. How clever is that?
Just another big push for World Government all run by the UN its never been for Peace