The View from Right Field

Joe Biden’s Priorities: Gasoline Prices > Ukraine

The Financial Times reported on Friday:

“The US has urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, warming that the drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation, according to three people familiar with the discussions. …

Washington is also concerned that if Ukraine keeps hitting Russian facilities, including many that are hundreds of miles from the border, Russia could retaliate by lashing out at infrastructure relied on by the west. …

Why Should Anybody Trust Us? The Joe Biden Edition – #2

I wrote posts with this title (or at least this idea) during the Obama administration (here and here) and the Trump administration (here).  (Since this blog only started in April 2006, I might not have written one about the George W. Bush administration.) 

I also wrote one about Joe Biden’s abrupt abandonment of Afghanistan.¹  We had allies there with us, but President Biden decided to leave without consulting them.  He wanted to leave (he had wanted to leave since Obama’s first term), and he wasn’t going to let facts or friends, or anything else, get in the way of what he wanted to do.

And so, we have Friday’s decision to halt the permitting of terminals for exporting liquified natural gas.  President Biden claimed it was about the climate crisis, but it was really about the political crisis.  He wants to get reelected.  After 32 years, he finally got to be President and he doesn’t want to give it up – and he doesn’t much care what he has to do to keep it.

Shale, f/k/a Fracking, Does It Again

According to today’s The Wall Street Journal:

“A surprise surge in American oil and gas production and exports is helping to keep the world stocked, blunting the impact of widening conflict in the Middle East that has crimped key shipping lanes. 

When Iranian-backed Houthi militants began launching missiles and drones at ships crossing the Red Sea near Yemen in October, many feared disruption to the vital shipping lane would drive up energy prices. But oil and gas prices this past month have sunk about 5% and 23%, respectively. 

COP-28 and the Big Question: Who Is Going to Pay for It?

With COP-28 going on in Dubai¹, I thought Greg Ip’s column in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal was very appropriate.  The headline in the print edition of the Journal asked the key question: “Who will pay for Green Transition?”

The answer is actually quite simple: If the Green Transition is going to happen, we are all going to have to pay for it, either through higher prices for energy, higher taxes to pay for all the subsidies the Biden administration is giving out, or higher deficits for those subsidies, which our grandchildren will eventually have to pay for.  Or maybe all three.

“Getting mad at oil majors will not solve climate crisis”

This is a letter to the editor published in the Financial Times on today under the heading quoted above: 

“The title of your Big Read on energy ‘Big Oil: still profits before planet’ (February 11) was misleading.¹  Regardless of what environmentalists and elites may think, it is not the job of oil companies to solve climate change.

Climate change requires more than world leaders agreeing to a set of lofty ideals in Paris and then having businesses do all of the work for them.  It requires leaders to actually convince people that governments need to pass laws and adopt regulations to cut emissions.  Climate change isn’t going to be solved by getting mad at oil companies.  It’s going to be solved by adopting a carbon tax that will put the real cost of carbon emissions in the price of products.  Or establishing an emissions trading system, with a decreasing cap on total annual emissions, that guarantees emissions will be cut.

Are Investors Being “Un-American” for Not Drilling More?

An article in the Financial Times last Monday quoted Anne Hochstein, President Biden’s international energy envoy, as saying:

“I think that the idea that financiers would tell companies in the United States not to increase production and to buy back shares and to increase dividends when profits are at all-time highs is outrageous.  It is not only un-American, it is so unfair to the American public.

You want to pay dividends, pay dividends.  You want to pay shareholders, pay shareholders.  You want to get bonuses, do that, too.  You could do all that and still invest more.  We are asking you to increase production and seize the moment. …

Thoughts of One and a Half Dozen of the Other*

It’s getting hard to write longer posts these days, so here are some short thoughts that I wish I could develop further but haven’t been able to get to:

• Re Ukraine: Joe Biden is doing a pretty good job, certainly better than either of his predecessors (especially Barack Obama, who wouldn’t even sell antitank weapons to Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Donbas in 2014).  But President Biden could be doing better.  We need to sell/give the Ukrainians more weapons and more powerful weapons.  The best, and quickest, way to end the war is for Ukraine to win.  Let’s help them do it – now.

• Given all the weapons we are shipping to Ukraine, we need to replenish, and build up, our own inventories.  That means spending more money on defense – and committing to do it for an extended period of time.

Building LNG Terminals; Counting Votes: Germany vs United States

The Financial Times reported today that Germany has completed the construction of an LNG import terminal in Wilhelmshaven (on the North Sea in northwest Germany) in 200 days.¹  The terminal, along with another in Brunsbüttel, which is to be completed by the end of the year, will facilitate the importation of LNG this winter to replace Russian gas. 

Getting this done is little month than six months is amazing.  One wonders how long it would take in the United States.  Probably years, if it could be done at all.  In the United States, 200 days would probably wouldn’t get you through the first round of pleadings and objections in the first of many lawsuits, let along getting a permit or even starting construction. 

Covid-19. Ukraine. Do We Ever Learn Anything?

When Covid-19, then known as the coronavirus, hit in early 2020, we weren’t ready.  We didn’t have enough personal protective equipment, our medical systems were inadequate, the plans we had for pandemics didn’t work, etc.  Things were a mess.  On April 26, 2020, I wrote a long post entitled “Preparing for the ‘Next’ Coronavirus – Whatever It Is. But Will We?”  But the post was not talking about just the next virus.  It was asking about the next emergency, the next disaster, the next big problem, whatever it was.  In the conclusion of my post, I said this:

“Robustness.  Resiliency.  Nimbleness.  These are what we need if we are to be ready for the emergencies and disasters that will happen, though we don’t know which ones or when.  Most of all, however, we need leaders who understand the importance of these qualities and who can provide the leadership to help us secure them and maintain them.”

Here’s My Theory Why Self-Driving Cars Are a Long Way Off: Lawsuits

On Monday, the Financial Times had an article noting that driverless cars may create more traffic jams because more people will take cars if they don’t have to drive themselves.  But, the article also noted that “[p]redictions for driverless cars hitting the road en masse have repeatedly been proved wrong.”  The FT published my letter giving my theory why in Friday’s paper.  Here it is (there is no link because it is behind their paywall):

“Lex talks about how driverless cars may result in more cars on the road as people find car travel even easier if they don’t have to drive themselves.  (‘Driverless cars: jam tomorrow’, March 7)  But the article also notes that, ‘[a]fter a decade of hype and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, you still can’t buy a self-driving car.’  As the article concludes, ‘[t]he future [of driverless cars] may also be further away that investors hope.’