Daily Standup Top Stories
25 States Sue EPA Over Unachievable Power Plant Regulations
West Virginia and Indiana are leading a group of 25 states asking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to declare the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule on coal, natural […]
New Climate Reality is Passing New York By
Note: For quite a while now I have put my Citizens Guide to the Climate Act article as the top post on the website because it summarizes the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act). This post updates my […]
There’s Not Enough Power for America’s High-Tech Ambitions
ATLANTA—Bill Thomson needs power fast. The problem is that many of the other businesspeople racing into Georgia do too. Thomson heads marketing and product management at DC Blox, which in recent years built a […]
US House passes Rep. John Curtis’ bill to remove ‘red tape’ around nuclear power
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill Wednesday aimed at accelerating nuclear power projects, which was sponsored by Utah Rep. John Curtis. Curtis, a Republican and founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, has […]
Low-cost solutions can give billions access to modern cooking by 2030, but the world is failing to deliver
Women and children bear brunt of harm from lack of clean cooking, which can be solved with modest investment, bringing major benefits in terms of health, development, gender equality and climate Nearly one in three […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:26 – 25 States Sue EPA Over Unachievable Power Plant Regulations
03:45 – New Climate Reality is Passing New York By
06:08 – There’s Not Enough Power for America’s High-Tech Ambitions
09:20 – US House passes Rep. John Curtis’ bill to remove ‘red tape’ around nuclear power
11:03 – Low-cost solutions can give billions access to modern cooking by 2030, but the world is failing to deliver
15:28 – Markets Update
20:57 – Outro
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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Michael Tanner: [00:00:15] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into the Monday, May 13th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up. Here are today’s top headlines. First up, 25 states sued EPA over unachievable power plant regulations. Who would have thunk on that one? Next up, new climate reality is passing New York by, among other things. Next up, there is not enough power for America’s high tech ambitions. We’ll then move to U.S. House. A House passes representative John Curtis is bill to remove, quote, red tape around nuclear power. We love it. And then finally, out of our favorite organization, the IEA, low cost solutions can give billions access to modern cooking by 2030. But the world is failing to deliver. There’s talk about ripe with irony here. Stu, then toss it over to me. I will quickly cover what happened in the oil and gas markets on Friday and quickly talk about rig counts, which, again, post a lower print, and then we’ll let you guys get out of here and start your Monday. As always, I am Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley. Go ahead and kick us off. [00:01:26][71.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:01:26] Hey, let’s get a running around to our favorite Biden. Oh my goodness. 25 states sue EPA over unachievable power plant regulations. What? Besides a few billion between friends? Michael, what’s one of our other greatest lines? [00:01:42][16.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:01:44] Sanctions don’t work. [00:01:44][0.8]
Stuart Turley: [00:01:47] Legislation through regulatory action. I mean, you gotta love the EPA. Continues to not fully understand the direction from the Supreme Court. Unelected bureaucrats continue their pursuit to legislate rather than rely on the elected members of Congress for their guidance. West Virginia Attorney General Monty said, I love it. Here’s another quote. The Green New Deal agenda the Biden administration then used a focus on the people, is setting the plants to fail and therefore shut, or, altering the nation’s already stretched grid the state Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. Wow, any of those states go move into right away? [00:02:55][68.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:02:56] Yeah, that is exactly I’m surprised Lord or Florida is on that list. I was going to say I think we’re missing one, but no, Florida is definitely on that list. This is a list of states you definitely want to move through. You also have to remember West Virginia has a history of this type of success in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. They successfully fought EPA rules in 2022. As the court said, the EPA should not use its regulatory authority to create broad new regulations with the Clean Air Act. So now they’re taking a step further and trying to move it into the power plants. We love it. I mean, it’s oh, yeah, like you said, legislation through regulation is is one of the most, you know, is a second order effect of having a large bureaucratic system that is absolutely unbelievable. [00:03:40][44.6]
Stuart Turley: [00:03:41] It is terrible. And a follow up to this story. New climate reality is passing New York by. This is actually by a, very interesting cat. He is. Roger has, I apologize for butchering your name. He’s the pragmatic environmentalist of New York, and he has written about that act, 350. He’s testified about all this. And there’s a couple of interesting, quotes in here that are pretty amazing in this article. This article, is is really good. This is the Citizen’s Guide to the Climate Act. And I’ve got the link in the show notes. Here I follow, this is him speaking. I follow the climate action suit, was first proposed, submitted comments, and he’s written over 350 articles about New York’s net zero transition. It ain’t gonna work. This cat is cool. I’ve already tried to reach out to him and get him on the podcast. Michael. I’ll let you know when that rolls around. It was established his net zero target, 85% reduction and 15% offset for emissions include an interim of 2030 reduction and 40% by 2030. This is a wonderful resource. Follow up to that other article. [00:05:07][85.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:05:08] Yeah. This is a great article that I recommend everybody go on to and hit the show notes. And the. Description below to find this link. I mean, who would have thought New Yorks making great bad decisions with with their energy. [00:05:20][12.6]
Stuart Turley: [00:05:21] Policy would not that. But you know what? It’s it’s fiscally irresponsible of political people. Germany and in California two of the the big. You know we always talk about how they’ve done things wrong. New York and right in there now. [00:05:39][18.4]
Michael Tanner: [00:05:40] I love this quote. He’s gotten here. Before we move on, the the scoping plan that documents this claim by Seggos has described as, quote, a true masterpiece in how to hide what is important under an avalanche of words designed to make people never want to read it. That’s a quote. Wow. Usually what I like to do is just you, you you know, you can you can baffle somebody with brilliance. You can bury them in words. [00:06:02][22.3]
Stuart Turley: [00:06:03] That’s right. That sounds like a better mine. Okay. No. Let’s go to the next article. There’s not enough power for America’s high tech ambitions. I love this one. This one, I believe, is from the Wall Street Journal. And when you take a look at this, the fastest. Mr. Producer, if you could bring up the fastest growing data center hubs in the US, this Northern Virginia 1200 and lanta is right at 700, Dallas is at 450, and Hillsboro is right up there in, Oregon. And when you sit back and take a look, I is driving the places nuts with data centers. Unbelievable. When you sit back and take a look in the the amount of electricity, we have not seen this in a generation, said Arne Olson, a senior partner at a consulting firm at Energy and Environmental Economics. As an industry, we’ve almost forgotten how to deal with load growth at this magnitude. People are forgetting. And here’s the thing everybody’s all in on AI until they get to pay for the bill. [00:07:18][75.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:07:19] Yeah, what I can’t quite figure out is why Atlanta and Hillsboro, Oregon make this list. Seems to be you’re too far away from source. You know, I, I get why northern Virginia and DFW, Northern Virginia. Well, you know, maybe. Does the federal government ring a bell to you guys, but also your access to cheap, cheap gas source gas from the Marcellus DFW makes sense. You’re close to the Barnett goes to Mid-Continent. You’re also close to, some of the stuff the gas coming out of the Eagle. But Atlanta in Oregon, I that is interesting to me. [00:07:53][33.4]
Stuart Turley: [00:07:53] Oregon is big tech and big tech play gets put into places where they don’t care or they don’t think. [00:08:02][8.7]
Michael Tanner: [00:08:03] I was gonna say they must. I get that there’s big tech in Oregon, and I haven’t really actually ever thought of Oregon as big tech. But I find that you’re going to have you’re going to be contending with higher cost energy, which is probably one of the largest categories and expenses for data center, I would assume. Right. [00:08:21][18.5]
Stuart Turley: [00:08:22] It wasn’t that way in the past. It is now. [00:08:24][1.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:08:25] Well, then it’ll be very interesting. They are they’re they’re they’re blowing up in in Atlanta right now which is, which is super interesting. But this comes back to the point where electricity demand in these areas and as we move to a you know, I think people have said, oh, we’re already in a high tech economy. We’ll just wait till I starts rolling out. It’s going to become a lot more crazy. Toby Rice loves this article. And you know, I saw, you know, photo a couple days ago of of Virginia and where all the data centers are tapped around. I mean, it’s no coincidence. It is no coincidence that a lot of these data centers popped up in Northern Virginia prior to a lot of the prior to what is now considered the energy boom. I’ll just throw that out. [00:09:07][41.8]
Stuart Turley: [00:09:07] Did it look like a Pooh map in California, or did it look like a high school kids face with this? [00:09:12][4.9]
Michael Tanner: [00:09:13] A kind of a combination of both? [00:09:15][1.4]
Stuart Turley: [00:09:16] I think that’s all right. [00:09:19][2.6]
Michael Tanner: [00:09:19] What’s next? [00:09:19][0.3]
Stuart Turley: [00:09:20] Let’s go to the House. Passes Representative John Curtis bill to remove red tape around nuclear power. Michael, I love me some nuclear. And I the only way that we’re going to get through low cost energy is the elimination, regulatory legislation through regulation. And Curtis, a Republican and founder of the conservative Climate Caucus, has been a proponent of nuclear power. Well, the cost and red tape associated with our permitting processes are providing to be duplicative and ineffective, Curtis said Thursday. We need an innovation in nuclear space to ensure affordable, reliable and clean energy, and Congress must do the same. I am excited about this. In fact, I want to let you know that Congressman, Congresswoman. A spat. You and I are, looking to interview on Wednesday, 1030 eastern. I’m pretty excited about that. She is, Congresswoman, she’s actually, Ukrainian born, and has got a lot of great things to say. I want to reach out to him and get him on the podcast as well, too. [00:10:34][74.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:10:35] Are you guys live from the border? [00:10:35][0.8]
Stuart Turley: [00:10:36] Live from the border? No, we’re actually going to go live on LinkedIn. [00:10:39][3.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:10:40] But no, I’m just I’m just giving you a hard time. But no, I mean, this has come up multiple, multiple times. If you really wanted to transition and you really want to find something to replace coal as a baseload energy power nuclear’s the only way to go. [00:10:53][12.5]
Stuart Turley: [00:10:53] You gotta love me some nuclear baby, and you gotta give old Doug Sandridge a shout out. Well, executives that love it. Hey, I’ve got one last story here, Michael. Low cost solutions. You found this one, and you brought this up right before the show. Gotta give, Michael Tanner a shout out. Low cost solutions, you know? Yeah. You know, for our podcast listeners, both of us are bowing. I have to bow to Michael. I don’t like telling anybody that I bought a Michael every before the show. Good morning. Almighty one. Low cost solutions can give billions to access modern cooking by 2030. But the world is failing to deliver. Michael, when you brought this one forward and said, we gotta have this a it hits all of my hot buttons, it’s. But it’s from the IEA. And they’re saying they need what. [00:11:42][48.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:11:43] Michael they need natural gas. I mean reading the open you the article here. What are they talking to us about? [00:11:48][5.4]
Stuart Turley: [00:11:50] Women and children bear the brunt of a harm from lack of clean cooking, which can be solved with modest investment, bringing major benefits from health and development and gender inequality in climate. But they don’t talk about it until later on. Clean cooking is a key topic for faith free Bristol Braille and being a cornerstone and blah blah blah. And then they come in here, and then they finally get down to it. 300 million need to gain access to clean material, and then they bury it in there and said, oh, it’s liquid petroleum gas. [00:12:25][35.7]
Michael Tanner: [00:12:26] So here we go. So what does this report say? Nearly 1 in 3 people around the world still cook their meals over open fires on basic stoves, resulting in significant damage to health, living standards and gender equality. And I agree with that, because who’s doing the majority of cooking in the third world countries? It is women. And yet this challenge can be overcome this decade to a relatively modest amount of investment, according to this new report by the IEA, produced in partnership with the African Development Bank Group, there are over 2.3 billion people that currently rely on charcoal, wood, fire or oh, and agricultural waste and get this animal poo as a resource to fuel to prepare meals, causing them to bring harmful smoke in the process. Air pollution of these rudimentary cooking’s blah blah blah 3.7 million basically what they they they produce. This report called a vision for clean cooking access for all which access, which offers a practical guide to bring the tools and fuels needed for every household worldwide who have access to clean cooking by 2030. They mentioned tools and fuels, but they don’t. They bury it. As you said, you gotta go all the way down until they finally say, what we need to do is get people on canisters of liquid petroleum, natural gas. So the IEA is now saying in order to cut carbon emissions, we need to move to natural gas. Did you guys three years ago. [00:13:43][77.5]
Stuart Turley: [00:13:44] Yes. And I think I love, propane for the last mile. It’s got to be better to be transported than in, in, horrific, Pakistan where they were, hauling, kids, remember? You and I talked about it last year. Kids were hauling natural gas in plastic bags. I mean, you got to set the infrastructure up for propane for the last mile. Natural gas is great. Link LNG is great, but let’s put in pipelines. Let’s put it in and let’s make the infrastructure cheap. [00:14:18][33.4]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:19] Yep. [00:14:19][0.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:14:19] Absolutely. Thanks for let me rant. And you did great finding this by the way. Oh by the way, my wife and I would not do very well in a third world country because her timer would not work in a hut. It’s the smoke detector. [00:14:34][14.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:36] Yeah, yeah, that’s when it’s when, you know, it’s done. [00:14:39][2.5]
Stuart Turley: [00:14:39] Well. [00:14:39][0.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:41] We’re sorry. Lisa. [00:14:42][0.6]
Stuart Turley: [00:14:43] She she was just cooking a little while ago. What about that? [00:14:46][2.7]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:47] All right, well, let’s go ahead and jump over to finance guys. Before we do that, we’ll go ahead and pay the bills here. As always, the news and analysis you just heard is brought to you by the world’s greatest website, www.energynewsbeat.com The best place for all your energy and oil and gas news. The, Stu and the team do a tremendous job making sure that website stays up to speed. Everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas. Just check out the Shownotes in the description below for links to all of the articles, timestamps, and all other links. To access our stuff you can check us out. Dashboard.energynewsbeat.com, and all of the subsequent links there. [00:15:27][39.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:15:28] It’s gonna be a quite a short episode from earlier segment for me. So I mean really we’ve only got, a rig counts and oil prices, you know overall markets on Friday though I did pop a little bit. You got up about a quarter percentage point both on the S&P and Nasdaq. Two year yields up one percentage points. Ten year yields was a little below one percentage point. So a good to see the the front term economy seems to shaping up a little bit. Dollar index up about point a dollar index up about a 10th of a percentage point. Bitcoin up about 1.3 percentage points. $61,000 after after dumping a little bit crude oil though. Didn’t have a great day. It’s down 1.26 percentage points 7826 is the market is about to open here as we record this Sunday afternoon. Brant oil down a little bit above one percentage points, $83. Even natural gas actually down two percentage points $2.22. You know really with with with the, you know, week with with really what kind of drove prices and drove this, this lower sentiment for oil was the fact that, you know, we did see some comments out of the, you out of the Federal Reserve and a few of their central bank officials saying that we probably are going to have higher interest rates for longer, which kind of cuts the speculation of what the market was hoping for, which was a few rate cuts coming. We probably won’t see that. What this after only transitory, you know, just transitory. You know, the thinking is this is going to continue to hinder, hinder any sort of oil demand growth. We also did see that, oil speculators call us crude net longs, which is actually super interesting. So maybe things are turning slightly bullish here. You can see that window being set and, you know, you know, we’ll we’ll do a quick moment of silence, for Jim Simons, the legendary hedge fund manager at 86, in charge of Renaissance Technology, who who passed away on Thursday. It will, you know, of all of the quotes and all the videos you saw, floating around there? He he he he said, you know, hey, commodities, you watch the trend and you can find the trend in commodities and you can ride it. And clearly, that trend of settling between 75 and 85, which we pounded here on this show, you can see as we get closer to that $75 level, you see the shorts begin to to be taken off. Longs come in and and, and, and and all the rest of this stuff. So it’ll be very interesting to see. We did see we did see some, you know, net longs get taken off. So it’s going to be very interesting. Again, a lot of what we’ve seen surrounding where oil prices has a lot to do, with the geopolitical risk that we’re seeing and I think, you know, as whether or not it’s being settled or not, the sentiment around the geopolitical risk has softened a little bit. So I think you’re seeing, a pullback on prices there. And the real question is, is 75 that floor or are we going to see it or are we going to see it continue to fall? It’ll be interesting to see that that quote actually came out of Laurie Logan who’s the Dallas Federal Reserve president. She said that, you know, she basically her quote was, we’re not sure if monetary policy is tight enough to bring inflation down to their central bank’s goal of 2%. So what does that mean? Rate stay the same or rates go up. That was backed up by Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic, even though he thought inflation was likely to slow under current monetary policy. You know, it may, you may only see a quarter percent drop. So super interesting there. The other thing we saw on Friday was rig counts. And again, recounts continue to fall. Guys, we dropped two rigs last week down to 603. If we go ahead and throw that image up right there, we’re still down 128 rigs from last year. Candidates on, for rigs drop internationally, though we did see seven rigs get picked up. So, you know, I’m going to take a little bit of a a swing and a miss here. And I was I was sure at the beginning of the year we were going to see rig counts continue. Yeah. Kind of turn around and climb. We’ve kind of seen a falling of rig counts really in the last, 3 to 6 months. I was, you know, with prices being sort of sustained at this $75 level, that that’s enough to make a lot of oil prospects profitable. And so, and and when I mean profitable, I mean, make the economics of an individual project look, okay, which is really interesting because what we what we’ve seen is that capital that may have gotten poured into drilling is getting poured into M&A. People are more willing to go out and buy PDP than they are to go, you know, drill a new well. And so I’ve swung this to the sentiment. I would have said we would have seen rigs a lot higher than they are now. And, and and it would be an interesting time, to go in and buy a bunch of non op as we’re going to see those RFP participations come out. But we really haven’t so I. I think the the it’s clear now companies are going to either return money to shareholders in the and in the form of buybacks or dividends, or they’re going to use that and create mergers. And when we’ve talked about all the different mergers, you can go check out the Deal Spotlight podcast that I have. Shameless plug. If you want to learn about some of the interesting stuff that’s going on there. But the it’s it’s it’s it’s shareholder returns or mergers, really all that’s happening right now with the, the amount of rigs running is, is what I would have thought is a lot less than what it maybe they should be. But again it it’s it’s the as Jim Simon said, the price is always right whether or not we believe it or not. So super interesting. It’s really all I’ve got do I anything else. What what should people be worried about this week? [00:20:58][330.1]
Stuart Turley: [00:20:59] Well, the solar storm was pretty interesting. I couldn’t back up our website, which is 26 gigs. You know, because of the solar data problems. So, you know, everybody buckle up. Hug your grid, hug a lineman. Yeah. [00:21:17][18.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:21:19] Hug a lineman. No, you got to throw that on the t shirt. Well, all right, guys, we’ll go on. Let’s get out of here. Start your Monday. Appreciate everybody’s checking us out. World’s greatest website. We are, we’re going to be at super dub her heart. And then on Wednesday. Thursday. So stew will probably rock a solo show Wednesday. And then, you’ll hear us in the. Yeah, yeah. So if you are around, Superdog in Fort Worth, come out, come over and find us. We’re gonna be helping, clean out with with some live podcasts from there. So come over and find us bucks. Give us a high five. And and and we’d love to talk shop, but, other than that, guys, hope you have a great week. We’ll be back in the chair tomorrow. Until next time, guys. [00:21:19][0.0][1228.1]
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