Daily Energy Standup Episode #202 – Energy Trends: EU’s Russian LNG Purchases, Oil Production Cuts, and EV Subsidy Concerns

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EU purchases of Russian LNG up 40% compared to pre-war levels, new study finds

September 5, 2023 Mariel Alumit

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

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Stuart Turley: [00:00:15] Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat Daily Stand Up. My name’s Stuart Turley, president CEO of the Sandstone Group. Tell you what, We got an action packed show. Michael’s on assignment. He’s a working class kind of guy, so we’ll keep you posted on his progress. We’re going to be traveling around the world first. And so let’s start out with EU purchases of Russian LNG, 40% compared to pre-war levels, new study finds. I think we knew that anybody that’s been in the business in Saudi Arabia to extend a voluntary cut of 1 million barrels per day until the end of the year, we knew this was going to also come along that Saudi Arabia and Russia and OPIC. It’s a whole new paradigm shift out there and they don’t want low price oil. So following along with that, there is a great Substack article by Ed Ireland, and I mean Ed is a very, very good author and industry thought leader. His article is titled Federal Subsidies for EVs Could Result in Economic Disaster. Kind of goes along with the next few articles here as I try to weave the stories together. And then we’re going to come in to the next one When the developer moves to terminate its contracts of Martha’s Vineyard in the whales. Had a party. We had some things coming up on that. Then we have another one. U.S. double renewable subsidies, that 15.6 billion in the last seven years. I think it’s even higher than that. But that was from the EIA. So we know the numbers are kind of left off a little bit. And then we had a Texas land commissioner come out and say, federal regulations may cripple oil and gas. They weren’t. I talked about this even with Michael this morning, yesterday morning on the podcast. [00:02:11][116.0]

[00:02:13] Legislation through regulation is going to cost the consumers more money. So with that, let’s start back around the country here with EU. Before I get started, if you like what you’re seeing, smash that button, as Michael would say, like subscribe. Share with your friends. Tell your mother, tell your aunt, tell your in-laws. We really are appreciative of everything that we have going on and all of the great feedback. We have lots of questions coming in and lots of great content. So hang on, here we go. We’re off to the EU and Russia. Several things in here. Just make it just absolutely wild. Belgium, Spain and France have become busy designated carriers for importing for the EU and Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Italy, Spain and Sweden are also listed by Global Witness as current consumers of Russian LNG in their based on shipping data appeared from Kepler, an analytics firm. Pretty crazy. Here’s some numbers that just made it mind boggling. The EU is estimated to have bought 52% of all Russian’s LNG exports between January and July of this year, and it marks 49% of 2022 and 39% of 2021. This is nuts and is a lot of LNG. So even though they’re not doing the pipeline, they’re paying more. And on a podcast just a little while ago, we talked about the price difference of natural gas for the US consumer versus natural gas in the EU. EU is around that $11 mark. And when you talk about the natural gas, it’s 230 something right now, somewhere in that range. So the consumers are getting it in the drive through. So it’s one of those kind of things. Unbelievable. Great article. So even though LNG volumes have increased, it’s a relatively overall over of the total energy is what they’re saying. [00:04:35][142.1]

[00:04:35] That’s not what the other folks have said. So it’s kind of interesting on that. Saudi Arabia has put out on Tuesday, said it extended its 1 million barrel per day boundary oil production cut until the end of the year, according to the state owned Saudi Press agency. Let’s see here to see if I can get a good quote. And Saudi Arabia depends on its oil revenues to support several so-called giga projects designed to diversify its economy. I have to always say I don’t always agree with the social, humanitarian things going on in Saudi Arabia. I handed. To the Saudi Arabian leadership for their energy policies and taking care of their Saudi first. So you have to admire Saudi Arabia on their energy policies. There would be less wars if everybody followed that. Riyadh had a GDP slowdown, which is a slowdown from 3.8% from the previous quarter in 11.2 in the same period of 2022. So Iran’s oil minister and Jawad, are we in the middle of August, said that his country was producing as much as 3.19 million barrels per day despite ongoing U.S. sanctions? Well, you know, when you take a look at Iran, they’ve gone around the sanctions. Sanctions don’t matter. I need to do one thing I’ve done. Irina Slav. Sure. Right over here. Irina Slav. I need to give you a shout out. Sanctions. Shirt is wonderful. I’ll put a picture of it in the show notes. Also, a shout out to Kat Slav from Bulgaria. I got this really cool picture from Cat. Thank you very much, Kat, Irina and Chris. Thank you guys very much. So off with the next around the world. The next one’s from Ed Ireland. Federal subsidies for EVs could result in economic disaster. [00:06:40][124.1]

[00:06:40] This is coming in about 16 different ways. We’ve talked about Ford losing an estimated $60,000, 50 to $60000 per car for the the subsidies that are coming in from the Inflation Reduction Act don’t align with cars that are being made in the U.S.. There’s a lot of things going on with this. And so let’s go through it. Follow We will have Ed Ireland Substack links in the show to follow, subscribe and support. Ed Fantastic Substack Author. Here’s a quote from Steve Forbes. Modern day socialists align their goals by not by nation nationalization of companies, but through regulation. In this case, auto manufacturers must go all out for EVs, even though there’s no credible evidence of it getting rid of the fossil fuels that will save the planet. Steve Forbes I thought that was very good. I also came up in yesterday when my wife and I were out running an errand behind the brand new Ford small pickup that was a hybrid. I love hybrids. Why don’t we go more to hybrids? I’m going to have to go check that out for Ford. Well done for the U.S. This is a quote from The Wall Street Journal. The EV booms make rural towns in America South chronicled massive investments in companies making plans to build EVs and electrical. The U.S. auto industry is accelerating its move south as car companies pour billions of dollars into new factories in Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee. So pretty critical that people want to go where workers are. And the auto companies have announced more than $110 billion TV related investments in the U.S. since about 2018. So a town of 400 people scrambles to prepare for 60,000 autoworkers as a giant Ford plant rises. Pretty cool. But let’s also have a plan because the Inflation Reduction Act does not allow for a lot of the manufacturers to do anything. [00:09:02][141.1]

[00:09:03] As Ed points out earlier on in the article, to do anything but sell 100% EVs, you got to be able to blend the make into the urban, which needs a hybrid and then get 60 miles per gallon as opposed to a full EV that is still using natural gas, coal and all of the other grid issues and having grid problems. Let’s have a little discussion on it. So anyway, Ed, great job. Let’s go to wind developer moves to terminate its contracts off Martha’s Vineyard. And the whales had a party. I threw that in there just as a fun little bit. But offshore wind developer took a major step this Tuesday. South Coast wind, whose pair of successful bids represented a combined 1200 megawatts of anticipated offshore wind power agreed to pay utility companies $60 million to terminate contracts. This is pretty good. The penalty would be divided into 32.4 million. For Eversource, 27.3 million for National Grid and 591 for unit, according to contract amendments filed within the Department of Public Utilities. This is critical. We’re seeing that no one wants to finish these wind projects because the amount of money and everything that I have again and found is it the fiscal capabilities or sustainability of wind farms is less than the eight year mark and they become carbon neutral at around ten. So nobody’s really wanting to get into these investments. The tax money is being applied. It is a mess. So we need to have great discussions about how to reduce the environmental impact of energy, provide more energy, and really take it to the next level of ending energy poverty. U.S. Doubles Renewable Subsidies 15.6 billion in the last seven years, the EIA says. I got tickled this past Saturday. I got to be on the three podcasters walk into a bar on C-SPAN with Mimi and she was fabulous interviewing David Blackmon, myself and RT, and we got trolled. [00:11:42][159.4]

[00:11:43] If you heard yesterday’s podcast, it was great. We loved everybody commenting. It was a lot of fun. Here’s where the fun part of this is. When you sit back and take a look at renewables in subsidies, somebody reached out and said, You’re talking good things about the oil companies and their subsidies. Well, actually, there’s a difference between subsidies and tax incentives. Tax incentives actually help investments from the business side of things. Tax subsidies come in from you, the taxpayer. Big difference. The tax incentives don’t increase the profit or the money to the consumer. The renewables or subsidies does big difference. 15.6 billion in the last seven years, says the EIA. The EIA number is normally off. So I would take this with a little bit of a grain of salt. In 2021, funding for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, which assists with energy bills and other energy related costs for one time, doubling to nearly 10 billion after Congress approved the additional funding for the program. This would not need to happen if there was a really good plan in place to use all forms of energy to use it critically in not print money. We’ve talked about it before. If you have any feedback, if you’re in the renewable wind, solar, oil, gas and you are a industry thought leader, I want to talk to you on the podcast. Please reach out. The form is in the show notes and then the last one coming around, which all ties into regulation legislation through regulation. The Texas Land Commissioner says new federal regulation may cripple oil and gas. This one, I got to give a shout out to David Blackman. He brought this up in one of his energy absurdities of the day not long ago. [00:13:52][129.3]

[00:13:52] Follow him on his substack and subscribe to that wonderful substack. Texas Land Commissioner Don Buckingham is concerned that a recent push from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife may mean that may lead to problems for the state’s oil and gas industry. There is a major shift on the dune sagebrush lizard. The DSL is now labeled as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. This drives me nuts. Here we have a lizard that is plentiful all through the Permian. There is no danger. There’s plenty of snakes. There’s plenty of this lizard running around. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency is doing nothing on the deaths of all of the whales going on on the East Coast. I had released yesterday the podcast two days ago, the podcast for Dr. Patrick Moore. We talk a lot about the saving the whales and everything else, and then we are also releasing two more podcasts on information saying how actually the wind farms damage all of the marine life and are in fact. A danger due mariner and human life. Let’s do wind. Let’s do solar. But let’s do it right without killing the environment or people. So this one is on there as well, too. So with that, let you get back in and oil and gas is going up in price. It was around $86 today. But I’m going to let Michael step in when he gets back on the financial side of things. There were some M&A activity going on. Thank you. Subscribe like. Tell your friends, tell your mother in law. Tell your father in law. We really appreciate everybody out there. Have an absolutely wonderful day. Hug somebody. Hug somebody that works. Have a great time. See you guys later. [00:13:52][0.0][811.9]

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