A Free-Market Energy Blog

Climate Leadership Council on Defense (ExxonMobil caper hits the front group)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 19, 2021

“Hence the CLC decision to ‘suspend’ ExxonMobil. Why did they not expel them once and for all? Obviously, the CLC hopes that ExxonMobil will grovel, endorse ever-more strongly the ‘climate crisis’ narrative and the imperative for climate policies making energy more expensive, and then — above all else — write a big check to the CLC as an exercise in the only kind of penance applauded by the political Left.”

“So bad at ideological battle are ExxonMobil and many others in the fossil-fuel sector that they remain convinced that a stance of ‘Me Too, But Less’ is politically viable.”

– Benjamin, Zycher, “The Climate Leadership Council ‘Suspends’ ExxonMobil.” August 16, 2021.

Unlimited money has produced a number of questionable groups that claim to be “bipartisan,” “conservative,” or “Republican.”…

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Plant Boondoggle (Georgia Power’s Vogtle 3 & 4)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 18, 2021

“In a press release today, Georgia Power announced that the long delayed Plant Vogtle expansion will be delayed even further. Unit 3, which has just finished a critical testing cycle, is now expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2022, and Unit 4 in the first quarter of 2023.”

The Augusta Chronicle, July 29, 2021.

In “Vogtle News,” a website from Georgia Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company, all seems swell with progress updates. But the real truth is that the construction of Plant Vogtle 3 & 4 is a boondoggle that has all but sidetracked nuclear as a major electric generation source for the foreseeable future.

It’s a mess. Original contractor Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt in 2017, which left the AP1000 (‘passive design’) project with Southern Nuclear, a subsidiary of the Southern Company.…

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Too Much Oil: Revisiting the 1930s Texas/Oklahoma Bonanza (throwback Tuesday)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 17, 2021

“The supply of oil from [East Texas] was so great that at one time crude oil sank to 10 or 15 cents a barrel, and gasoline was sold in the East Texas field for 2 1/8¢ a gallon. Enforcement by Texas of its proration law was extremely difficult.”

Okay, this is Throughback Tuesday, not Thursday. But some energy history is good from time-to-time on any day of the week. And here in the summer of 2021, with oil prices swinging a bit on a lot of different news, it might surprise the reader that the traditional problem here in the U.S. has been too much oil, not not enough.

Here is the story in the 1920s/1930s as recalled in an antitrust suit under the Sherman Act, United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co.…

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“Energy Facism” (Rothbard 1974 speaks to us today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 16, 2021
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Book Review: Angwin’s ‘Shorting the Grid’

By Michael Giberson -- August 12, 2021
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Kinder-Morgan Interview: Thumbs Up (energy realism, apologies not)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 11, 2021
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Silly Season at the UN: 1989 vs. 2021 Climate Doomsday (it’s all politics now)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 10, 2021
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1,876 Pages: Texas’s ISO Rules (central planning, mother-may-I system)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 9, 2021
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Pokalsky, Borlick, Kiesling: Capacity Markets Now Essential in Texas (central planning rethink)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 5, 2021
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Denton, TX: Grid Reliability Sinks Renewables

By -- August 4, 2021
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