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Similar to watching German and California as a signal for the crazy energy policy to come, I’m concerned the UK may be setting a precedent (in stupidity) with their windfall tax. Which ultimately will just create more supply destruction.
UK’s Path to Curbing Oil Windfall Tax Slated by Industry
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Few have a better grasp of the big picture than Louis Gave: Ted Oakley Oxbow Advisors with Louis-Vincent Gave
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"Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon."
-Jessie Livermore
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I found this story wild.
Charts
Things will get interesting if China’s LNG imports return to trend and Europe has a cold winter.
“China’s LNG imports fell by 16.3 million tonnes or 20% in 2022, according to statistics from the General Administration of Customs.
The slump was a remarkable turnaround after imports had increased at a compound rate of 26% per year for the previous six years.
If China’s imports had continued increasing at the previous rate, they would have approached 100 million tonnes instead of the 64 million tonnes recorded.”
Something I'm Pondering
I’m pondering the ramifications of some of these “energy efficiency and sufficiency” assumptions.
This quote is quite something:
“It will remain a significant 130bcm gap that could be filled by energy efficiency and sufficiency measures.”
My take is it will be a mix of the EU industry getting crushed (efficiency) and firing up the coal plants (sufficiency) that “fill the gap”.
When you read their proposed solutions, it’s exactly this “slowdown in coal phase-out”, aka fire up all available coal capacity.
My understanding is the recent German nuclear shutdown is final (they can’t be restarted) so that ship has sailed.
Limit electricity demand (pretty self-explanatory)
As for 2025-2030, solutions boosting renewables will only make the problem worst, as you can’t solve intermittency by adding more intermittency, which seems to be the plan below.
A boost in supply from friendly LNG exporters seems the only possible solution, but then they will need to compete with Asia, particularly China, for it (refer back to the Chart section).
I hope you’re all having a great week.
Cheers,
Ferg
P.S. I’d appreciate you sharing my work with anyone who might find it interesting.
Especially my recent two pieces:
Coal the Beneficiary of Dumb Energy Policy
Why Energy is a Fat Pitch here
Ohh, and lastly, I came across this cartoon which sums up the majority of debates on nuclear power.
Keep those pithy, trenchant commentaries coming, Ferg. Most appreciated. Especially after my return from a visit to to our native land. Kind regards, Glenn.
We are blinded by the climate catastrophe ideology and no matter how bad it gets we keep doubling down on renewables that can't support our energy needs.