30 Comments

Between you and Doomberg, I know where Trump should be sourcing his energy team

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We’re happy to help in restoring energy sanity on the national stage

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The haters and fools are out on you guys for some reason. Stay strong and keep the truth coming! Xxxx climate garbage !!!!! Human flourishing thru energy abundance!

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Well some of the climate alarmists comments already show that panic in the green streets of Nirvana have set in it. Critical will be what the Hell to do with the department of energy. Hopefully reduce it in scope and scale. (At present impractical to simply bin it, though binned it ought be) this said, end offshore wind as indicated; the east coast of the USA is not the Baltic Sea off the coast of Denmark. It is impractical expensive environmentally unsound and makes nuclear energy at 50 cents a KW look cheap. End the solar land grab, enough already, this is the same BLM by the way, that declared a species of grass in the high desert of Idaho “endangered” adding about $1.5m in additional work around costs for a wind project, only to determine later that it wasn’t endangered after all. No refunds and no apologies issued. It would not surprise this writer if discussions with regard to Keystone have been ongoing with the Trump transition team. (Yeah that is right, they got a donor to pay for a team to work during the last several weeks betting on the come, that Trump would win re-election. Not a bad bet apparently) One can count on the idea that ANWR will be back on the table as well as additional natural gas storage, pipeline development and construction and furtherance of LNG terminal buildouts. All of this bodes well for “energy” writ large and a move to resilience and self sustainability. Likely as example we will see a revisiting of efforts to reinforce the grid at distribution and transmission levels against solar and or state sponsored terrorist attack EMP events. Hello Faraday cages on the micro and macro scale. We can dream that distributed generation cogen or otherwise will be encouraged on small and medium scales. (Look at the development of these data centers as potential augmentation to grid operation, they could establish QF status if they are being clever in the financing parfait as they bring their developer dreams to Wall Street and the state and federal governments.

Lastly just maybe, Orangeman Bad will put an end to the revolving door of private sector thugs from investor owned utilities winding up at FERC or other regulatory agencies and vice versa. If one wishes to be Dudley Do Right of the long arm of Federal regulation good for them, but once they pass a bunch of nonsense to the benefit of say the thieves at PG&E they can’t go work for PG&E for at least 5 years, and something similar if a regulated utility wants to plant a mole in a federal regulatory agency.

We hear all the time about existential threats, apparently there are a lot of them, but a warming climate isn’t one of them, yes it’s settled science we just don’t have law makers that know how to read or rewind a rotor and stator and assemble it to produce a kilowatt; thusly leaving us unwashed and unshaved to the vicissitudes of government whim and overreach, unscrupulous developers, greedy bankers and the imbeciles paid egregious sums in salary and bonus to “operate” the generation, transmission and distribution of electric energy. In sum we can plagiarize Herman Wouk’s opening to his novel “The Caine Mutiny” when it comes to all manner of issues regarding matters at hand: “The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.” Replace the word Navy with electric power and you have the current state of play. Hope springs eternal, hey look at it this way, if a nuclear submarine officer turned peanut farmer could create the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 than here in America anything and everything is possible!

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Let’s do what works—Natural Gas and Nuclear! I am sure solar has a role and maybe wind too, but at industrial scale it seems not to be the best choice absent subsidies and mandatory compliance regimes. Domestic energy plus domestic industry will be a boon!

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Agreed. Coal has it's place, too, if allowed, but a nuclear+natural gas portfolio would be the lowest cost way of reducing emissions. I'd prefer no wind and solar, but no more than 5-10% if included. Without subsidies and mandates, that wouldn't be an issue.

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I wish you had mentioned the prospect for NRC reform as a possible impulse toward a revitalization of nuclear.

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That’s a great suggestion. NRC reform isn’t our specialty so we figured we’d stick to what we know best this week.

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The NRC was tasked with creating advanced reactor regulations, which 80% of interested parties panned

I believe that third party bids for advanced reactor regulations should be solicited. The NRC can't be trusted to really change without the realization that someone else could get the job

In a best case a third party would succeed and they could even be tasked with regulating standard large reactors as well

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Keep fighting the fight for common sense.

The environmental damage from wind, solar, EV’s and Hydrogen power is as insane as the amount of money the government has been spending on them.

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Great list, and succinctly put. Thank you.

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The first year of the first Trump admin saw the rollback of 10s of thousands of regulations. There is some law that grants them the first year to slash most of what they want and they will do it again. G-d bless Bob Lighthizer and Wilbur Ross!

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Excellent article. Thank you!

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The Current Regime is totally removed from the reality of the constructive use of energy resources of the USA. Their interests have been driven by unrealistic concepts of energy resources, economic considerations of energy sources and the environmental consequences of energy resource utilization. They have based their decisions and financial commitment on unsubstantiated ideology regarding the effects of CO2 on climate chance and the relationship of So- Called Fossil fuels and and “Global Temperature”—a non sequiter

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My region, the Magic Valley in Idaho, is fighting an onslaught of giant wind, solar and transmission line projects. The most talked about is Lava Ridge but there are many lined up. We are talking hundreds of thousands of acres. Could you please tell me how I could get a copy of the legislation you discussed in your article? The Only Pay for What You Get Act. We are a rural community and are fighting Goliath...LS Energy and the BLM. Any advice/ help would be most appreciated. Thank you for all that you do to bring back sanity! Julie Stadtherr

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Let’s hope Trump follows through on this. Energy should be a very high priority.

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hopefully Pres. Trump's and climate sanity will infect the rest of the "woke" world

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Hopefully this is the death knell of non renewable energy in America.

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How do I love thee, let me count the ways.

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The DOI needs to reduce the royalty rates on federal lands from 16.67% back to 12.5%, drop the enormous fees for permitting and bonds for drilling, and rights-of-way, and any attempt to include conservation leases in the competitive lease sales (illegal under the Minerals Leasing Act) should be scrapped. As soon as possible after reduction of royalties and fees, (independents cannot absorb these additional rates) send out the requests for lands by the BLM to the industry as soon as possible and begin the first competitive lease sale on public lands when BLM closes on the approved leases to be listed. Due to time frames, the industry gets a lease sale every quarter. With a rollback of regs and paperwork, the BLM could add at least one additional lease sale since only one has happened in 2022, none in 2023 or 2024. Biden has one lease sale scheduled for 2025, one in 2026 and one in 2027. Although the lease sales would almost immediately be litigated by enviros, DOI Burgum needs to respond with attorneys to environmentalists immediately. In addition, all acreage onshore and offshore that has been banned from leasing on public lands, including tribal lands should be open to the industry on day one unless withdrawn for real and studied scientific reasons with proven methods that have been fully agreed upon by a non-partisan true scientific group.

The Sierra Club vs NMFS needs to be dealt with on day one. This case was brought on ludicrous grounds with the Deep Water Horizon as the example to sue to stop offshore oil and gas operations and leases. The ruling is catastrophic and carries severe damage to the offshore operators in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. Federal Judge Broadman in Maryland, has no authority to reverse a Biological Opinion for reasonable protections under the Endangered Species Act for the offshore oil and gas operators. Which Includes leasing and operators crew transportation to and from the platforms. The most idiotic but true to the Biden Green New Disaster, is that the Biden Administration is preparing to do another BIOp to satisfy a judge who knows zero about energy while the Sierra Club is in the bag, along with Earthjustice for Ousted, the big offshore wind developer . DOI has to get this tossed pronto since if the ruling stands, the industry's protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) will be revoked in May, 2025. It's a door that will swing wide for environmentalists to play gotcha by using dead marine life placed by a platform and sue. It will Leave the industry fully exposed and at risk. This covers 15% of the nation's production so we face national security and energy reliability risks.

The DOI should also look into the idea of the Bitcoin miners to hook into the oil and gas wells and use the flared gas to mine data. Due to liability issues the industry has not embraced this possible technology to reduce flaring and increase data. Under oil and gas leases, a landowner has the right to hook up homes near the wells for energy so with careful development Bitmining could be possible on a rather large scale.

Last but not least, every BLM office in NM, WY, KS, UT, CO, needs a complete overhaul. They slow walk permits, hassle pumpers, fine operators for trash that blows in and if a dead pigeon is in the pit, it's a huge fine and extra nets and extreme measures are demanded.

Biden-Harris and the Administration and media scream from the rooftops that they allowed the industry to produce the highest amount of crude oil on record. However, in 2016 when Trump took office crude oil was 8.6 million b/d, in March 2020 crude oil hit 13 million b/d in Trump's 3 years. So Biden had 12.6 million out of the pandemic and in 4 years is now 13.2 million b/d. So, record is in the eyes of the non-energy and green beholders.

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