“Sustainability” is something of a corporate fad.
Shell Oil has a sustainability policy. So does ExxonMobil.
Dow Chemical. Walmart. Mattel.
Even Ben and Jerry’s has a sustainability policy.
Even though “sustainability” may be interpreted differently in different companies, sustainability is something that corporate boards have come to expect of their managements.
Is it too much to expect our government and the people who run it to act as if they’re conscious of its sustainability?
If “it’s all about the jobs”, why are Democrats trying to kill one of the only successful job creation engines in our economy?
From Texas and Louisiana to North Dakota and Pennsylvania, energy development is creating good jobs, well-paying jobs, by the tens and even hundreds of thousands. Billions of dollars are flowing into the economies of the host states. The common thread of the booms in these states is shale drilling. Over the last few years, technological advancements have enabled commercial oil and gas production from shale rock long thought unproductive.
Successful? At this point, some 25% of domestic natural gas production is from shale formations. And that proportion is expected to grow in the coming years.
As with most new technologies, shale drilling is not without controversy. But now, spurred by a series of skeptical articles in the New York Times, Congressional Democrats (including Reps. Markey of MA and Hinchey, Nadler and Maloney of NY) are calling for the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the methods the leading shale companies use to estimate their reserves.
Congressional Democrats routinely call for investigations when energy company profits are “obscenely high”; ironically, these same folks are calling for a probe on suspicion that the profitability of shale gas is not high enough.
Jackson, our Labradoodle, is two years old today.
An article by Sarah Kent in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “Traders Eye Oil Tanker Play”, (full text requires subscription*) purports to explain current action in the oil market, as 30 million barrels of crude oil are due to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) before August 31.
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While they fall short of the lefty paranoia of ThinkProgress.org and its crack “investigative journalist”, the diminutive Lee Fang, the WSJ invokes the magic word of commodities trading — “Contango!” — without understanding the facts at hand.
In reality, oil refiners and traders have already made their profit. The President’s action of releasing SPR oil drove prices down — very temporarily. Today, prices are already about $5 per barrel above the average auction price of SPR oil. The successful bidders are not storing the oil to eke out a few cents per barrel profit: they are storing the oil because existing land-based storage is full. Given that reality, the perceptive reader might ask, “So where is the emergency?”
On Friday, former Louisiana Governor and ex-con Edwin W. Edwards (D) escorted his new wife Trina through New Orleans’ French Quarter after their Friday wedding at the Hotel Monteleone, on their way to a post-wedding feast at historic Galatoire’s.
At a $250-a-plate roast on Saturday night, a gang of former and current politicians and cronies cracked wise at the ex-governor’s expense. Most of the humor centered on the 52 year age difference between Edwards and his bride.
Roasters trod lightly on Edwards’ eight years in prison, referring to his time behind bars as his “sabbatical leave,” his “vacation” and his “public service engagement.”…
Referring to earlier references to the idea that oysters are aphrodisiacs, Edwards said, “I had a dozen last night, and only 10 of them worked.”
Edwards also took aim at Gov, Bobby Jindal, mocking the fact that Jindal participated in an exorcism of a young woman while he was in college. Edwards feigned amazement and said that if he saw a girl lying on the floor, seemingly under a spell, “I wouldn’t waste any time trying to take the devil out of her.”
Har-har.
The Viagra-enhanced honeymoon exploits of the octogentian ex-con were undoubtedly impressive, but certainly no match for the screw job Edwin put on Louisiana during his four terms in Baton Rouge.
A local radio ad touts the benefits of residential solar systems:
A local vendor’s website goes into more detail:
Compared to investing in the stock market, or leaving money in the bank, investing in solar energy creates a high return on investment. Where else can you get an 80% ROI in a year or less!? The return is secure and predictable – and you physically own your investment! You don’t have to worry about your bank surviving or the investment banks behaving themselves—your solar investment is safe on your roof.
Why are we doing this again? Continue reading
A new study from IHS-CERA, one of the leading energy think tanks, projects the cost of the Department of the Interior’s ongoing regulatory slowdown and its impact on the energy industry, employment in the coastal states, and the U.S. economy in general. The study, released on Thursday, was commissioned by the Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST).
We’re beginning to see the true cost of an energy-hostile Administration in Washington. Their policies are not just an inconvenience to a few companies. They are permanently damaging infrastructure which will be difficult to impossible to rebuild. That seems to be their intent.
From the study’s Executive Summary (.pdf link to full study):
Swift action to reduce the growing backlog of plans and increase the pace of plan and permit approvals to explore for oil and natural gas resources in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico would increase employment opportunities in almost every state, boost tax and royalty revenues for governments, and help stabilize US energy security. And these benefits could materialize rapidly. Early alignment between the capacity to properly regulate oil and natural gas activities and the pace and scale of investment opportunities would capture the largest possible share of the activity gap, which in 2012 results in
- 230,000 American jobs
- more than $44 billion of US gross domestic product (GDP)
- nearly $12 billion in tax and royalty revenues to state and federal treasuries
- US oil production of more than 400,000 barrels of oil per day (bd) (equivalent to approximately 150 million barrels in the full year)
- reducing the amount the United States sends to foreign governments for imported oil by around $15 billion
The employment effects would not be limited to the Gulf states. One-third of those jobs would be generated outside the Gulf region in such states as California, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
[Emphasis added.]
Green Vehicles designed and built the TRIAC 2.0, a three-wheeled car that could be powered up by plugging it into a wall outlet overnight. KSBW.com photo.
Tiny start up Green Vehicles of Salinas, CA has gone belly-up. The city of Salinas had infused $540,000 since 2009, but it was not enough. The company had a hard time finding outside investors, and when an expected $2.7 million from the State of California failed to materialize, President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan called it quits.
Electric Car Maker Folds, Salinas Loses $500,000 (from KSBW.com, via Drudge)
City leaders wooed Green Vehicles to jump-start the sputtering local company and turn Salinas into an “electric valley.” Donohue and Weir both voiced their high hopes for Green Vehicles.
The start-up company promised city leaders that it would create 70 new jobs and pay $700,000 in taxes a year to Salinas.
AEP's Mountaineer Power Plant in New Haven, WV.
The technology had been heralded as the quickest solution to help the coal industry weather tougher federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But Congressional inaction on climate change diminished the incentives that had spurred A.E.P. to take the leap.
Company officials, who plan an announcement on Thursday, said they were dropping the larger, $668 million project because they did not believe state regulators would let the company recover its costs by charging customers, thus leaving it no compelling regulatory or business reason to continue the program.
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Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Chu defends the banning of conventional incandescent light bulbs as a ‘common-sense’ measure that is certainly a ‘win-win’ for consumers. (Caution: Clicking HuffPo links may cause a loss of IQ points.)
Overall, consumers will save $6 billion a year from these standards.
Here’s another example of how common-sense standards like these have been working for American families for decades: since the 1970’s, we’ve made energy-saving improvements to refrigerators that now save Americans $20 billion per year, or $150 per family.
Seems to me that if we went back to old refrigerators (@ $20 B) and light bulbs (@ $6 B) and got rid of the Department of Energy (@ $30+ B), we’d be money ahead.
My skepticism has a basis in experience, Mr. Secretary: thanks to the same kind of ‘common-sense standard’, my EPA-mandated 1.6 gallon-per-flush toilet doesn’t do its job properly. Chances are those efficient refrigerators would have found their way into the marketplace without government interference. And as with CAFE standards and “light trucks” a/k/a SUVs, the marketplace will find a way to circumvent the will of Washington when it runs contrary to their wishes and desires.
While we’re on the topic of common sense, the following photo and caption can be found at Dr. Chu’s Facebook page: Continue reading
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