December 2, 2013
Energy Tribune
Michael J. Economides, an international authority on petroleum engineering, died late Saturday evening while onboard a jetliner bound for Santiago, Chile. He was 64.
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Robert Bryce's articles have appeared in dozens of publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Counterpunch and Atlantic Monthly to Oklahoma Stripper. His third book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence," was published in 2008. Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His most recent book, Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy, and the Real Fuels of the Future, was published in 2010 by PublicAffairs. He lives in Austin. |
Michael J. Economides, an international authority on petroleum engineering, died late Saturday evening while onboard a jetliner bound for Santiago, Chile. He was 64.
The Justice Department announced late last week that a subsidiary of Duke Energy has agreed to pay $1 million for killing golden eagles and other federally protected birds at two of the company's wind projects in Wyoming. The guilty plea was a long-overdue victory for the rule of law and a sign that green energy might be going out of vogue.
For years, the wind-energy sector and renewable-energy advocates have repeatedly claimed that wind turbines are essential to the fight against carbon dioxide emissions and catastrophic climate change. Here’s the reality: Wind turbines are nothing more than climate-change scarecrows.
Forty years have passed since the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. In that time span, the United States has increased its population by about half, nearly tripled its economic output, and nearly doubled its per capita GDP. While doing so, the U.S. has increased its oil consumption by just 7 percent.
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U.S. Nuclear Power's Looming Component ShortageFox Business October 11, 2013 Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Robert Bryce on the potential shortfall of Lithium-7. |
For some environmentalists, the threat of climate change is so great that we must allow wind turbines to kill bald and golden eagles. The argument I've heard is that renewables, including wind energy, will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Less carbon dioxide reduces the threat posed by climate change, which benefits eagles and other wildlife.
Forty years ago this month, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an embargo on oil exports to the U.S. as retaliation for its support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It would last only five months, but it haunts U.S. energy policy to this day.
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Why The US Will Dominate In Shale Gas and Shale OilOctober 2013 2013 Manhattan Institute conference on the American oil and gas renaissance. |
On Friday, the EPA finally unveiled its long-awaited rules for new coal-fired power plants. The agency’s administrator, Gina McCarthy, has claimed that the new rules “will provide certainty for the future of new coal.”
This month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will begin releasing its fifth assessment report. Like earlier reports, it will undoubtedly lead to more calls to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide.
No president in modern American history has bashed the oil and gas industry more than Barack Obama. And none has benefited from that industry more.
Proving that last sentence is easy. It requires only that we imagine what world oil prices — and the U.S. economy — would look like in the absence of the shale gale, the multi-state surge in domestic oil and gas production of the past few years, as drillers have figured out how to produce vast quantities of methane and liquids from shale deposits.
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U.S. Energy Boom Key to Economy’s Recovery?Fox Business September 4, 2013 Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Robert Bryce on the potential economic benefits of the growth of the U.S. energy sector. |
Keep the poor in the dark: That’s the aim of some of the world’s biggest and most influential environmental groups. And last month, both the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the World Bank helped advance it. Out of concern for climate change, they announced, they would restrict financing for coal-fired power plants.
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Coal Consumption Expected To GrowFox Business July 26, 2013 Manhattan Institute senior fellow Robert Bryce on coal remaining a top source of power. |
Africans can burn coal. Americans can’t.
That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the Obama administration’s most recent forays into energy policy.
The gulf between the hard realities of the global energy market and the Obama administration’s energy policies grows wider by the day.
On Wednesday, Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change, told a group of reporters that Obama, knowing that climate change is “a legacy issue,” will soon issue new rules to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from electricity-generation plants. “After all that we’ve done, after all that historic progress in the first four years, we are well poised to take meaningful action for the second term,” Zichal said.
The Goliath of the wind-energy business is suing David. The defendant is Esther Wrightman, an activist and mother of two from the tiny town of Kerwood, Ontario, which sits roughly halfway between Detroit and Toronto.
Wrightman, 32, has angered the Florida-based NextEra Energy (market capitalization: $32 billion) by starting a couple of bare-bones websites, ontariowindresistance.org and mlwindaction.org, as well as a YouTube channel, which she uses to lampoon the company. In its lawsuit, filed on May 1, NextEra claims that Wrightman has misused its logo and libeled the company by calling it “NexTerror” and “NextError.” And while the company doesn’t specify the amount of damages it seeks from Wrightman, it says that it will donate any proceeds from the litigation to United Way.
Amid the myriad tragedies and heartache caused by the Second Iraq War, the death of Col. Westhusing is among the saddest and most senseless. I have been asked by a number of people who knew Col. Westhusing for some of the documents that I obtained from the Defense Department via the Freedom of Information Act over the course of my year-long inquiry into his suicide. Rather than distribute paper copies, it makes sense to make them available in electronic form.
If you are interested in my writings on Westhusing from '07 and '08, see here and here.
Herewith, a batch of the key documents, in PDF:
1. Anonymous letter sent to Col. Westhusing in May 2005 regarding alleged misconduct by contractors working for the U.S. military in Iraq.
2. June 17, 2005 interview of Westhusing's widow, Michelle, by Army investigators.
3. Sworn statements from people who knew Col. Westhusing.
4. Bulk of the report done by the Army's Inspector General.
5. Bulk of the report done Army Criminal Investigation Command.
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What Are The Challenges For Opec?WSJ Digital Network May 31, 2013 Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Energy Policy and the Environment joins MoneyBeat. |
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Wind Power Farms Threaten Bald EaglesFox Business May 26, 2013 Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce on the the impact wind farms have on birds. |
The U.S. military’s expensive experiments with biofuels – along with the rationale for entire biofuels business -- has been gunned down in a fusillade of friendly fire.
You may recall that over the past few years, the Pentagon has been funding a number of efforts to develop biofuels. On Earth Day 2010, the Navy flew an F-18 using a mixture of conventional jet fuel and biofuel derived from camellina, a plant in the mustard family. After the flight, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus declared that the Navy and Marine Corps were committed to “reducing dependence on foreign oil as well safeguarding our environment.”Since then, Mabus and the Navy have continued to hype the potential of biofuels and its effort to create a “Great Green Fleet” of ships. And in March, the Navy insisted its alt-fuel program won’t get hit by the sequester.
The wording of the Eagle Protection Act could not be any clearer. It “prohibits anyone, without a permit issued by the Secretary of the Interior,” from “taking” bald or golden eagles. The law defines “take” as “pursue, shoot, shoot at, poison, wound, kill, capture, trap, collect, molest or disturb.”
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Is Fracking the Solution to State, Local Budget Woes?Fox Business April 29, 2013 Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce on the potential financial benefits to state and local governments of fracking. |
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The Tyranny of NumbersOSU Energy Conference April 23, 2013 The Manhattan Institute's Robert Bryce provides the keynote address to the 2013 OSU Energy Conference. |
In 2012, U.S. oil production rose by 790,000 barrels per day, the biggest annual increase since U.S. oil production began in 1859. In 2013, the Energy Information Administration expects production to rise yet again, by 815,000 barrels per day, which would set another record. Domestic natural gas production is also at record levels.
What has allowed such dramatic production increases? Innovation in the drilling sector. The convergence of a myriad of technologies—ranging from better drill bits and seismic data to robotic rigs and high-performance pumps—is allowing the oil and gas sector to produce staggering quantities of energy from locations that were once thought to be inaccessible or bereft of hydrocarbons.
(View or save the full report by clicking on the image below)
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If We’re Running Out of Fossil Fuel Why is U.S. Exporting More?Fox Business April 2, 2013 The Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce on America’s increased exportation of oil and natural gas. |
These are lousy times to be in the peak oil cult.
In December, U.S. oil exports hit a record of 3.6 million barrels per day, thanks in part to soaring domestic petroleum production.
Among the Mount Everest of inanities ever uttered on the subject of energy, the blue-ribbon winner must be this: “the tyranny of oil.”
Both Barack Obama and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have used the line. Obama claimed it for his own back in 2007 when he declared his run for the White House. Standing on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., Obamasaid, “Let’s be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil.”
In theory, the March 11, 2011, disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant should have bolstered environmentalists’ opposition to new nuclear-energy projects. But in the wake of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, some of the world’s leading Greens have done just the opposite: they have come out in favor of nuclear power. Perhaps the most prominent convert is British activist and journalist George Monbiot, who even cites the disaster as one reason for his change of heart. Just ten days after Fukushima, in a column for the Guardian, Monbiot called the use of solar energy in the United Kingdom “a spectacular waste of scarce resources” and declared that wind energy was “hopelessly inefficient” and “largely worthless.” Moreover, he wrote, “on every measure (climate change, mining impact, local pollution, industrial injury and death, even radioactive discharges) coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power.” He concluded: “Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.”
Last week, four dozen opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and environmental activist Bill McKibben, were arrested after they engaged in civil disobedience near the gates of the White House. Some of the activists attached themselves to the fence around the White House and others refused to move after being ordered to do so by U.S. Park Police. On Sunday, tens of thousands of people marched in Washington, D.C., to protest the pipeline project.
Mayor Bloomberg wants to double down on electric vehicles, but it’s a bad bet for New York.
In his State of the City speech last week, Bloomberg said he wants to add 10,000 new electric-vehicle charging stations over the next seven years. To that end, he wants the City Council to amend building codes so that 20 percent of all new parking spaces must be “wired and ready for electric vehicles.”
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Robert Bryce has written four books and hundreds of articles. Check out his work. |
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Bryce appears regularly on Fox, CNBC, and other networks. View his YouTube Channel. |
