A major U.S. fuel supply company has issued an alert about diesel fuel shortages in several Southeastern U.S. states
States that are expected to experience shortages include Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, Mansfield Energy said in an alert last week. The company also noted “extremely high prices in the Northeast.”
“Poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel inventories are combining to cause shortages in various markets throughout the Southeast,” the company said. “These have been occurring sporadically, with areas like Tennessee seeing particularly acute challenges.”
It noted that fuel prices are 30 to 80 cents higher than the posted market average due to “tight” supply, while saying that “fuel suppliers have to pull from higher cost options, at a time when low-high spreads are much wider than normal.”
Fuel carriers are now having to go to “multiple terminals to find supply, which delays deliveries and strains local trucking capacity,” it said.
Due to “rapidly devolving” conditions, the firm issued its “Alert Level 4” to address the volatility, according to the statement. For the southeastern United States, Mansfield said it is issuing a “Code Red” alert and is “requesting 72-hour notice for deliveries when possible to ensure fuel and freight can be secured at economical levels.”
Diesel enables most of the shipping across the United States and is used by long-haul trucks and freight trains. While gasoline prices have dropped since they posted record highs in June, diesel hasn’t decreased nearly as much and currently stands at $5.31 per gallon, according to AAA.
Bottlenecks in supply chains caused by COVID-19 lockdowns and soaring energy prices have added to rising price levels. Data released earlier this month show the Consumer Price Index, a key inflation metric, has risen 8.2 percent year-over-year in September.
Republicans, meanwhile, have targeted the Biden administration for its policies around oil drilling, pipeline construction, and unremitting focus on promoting electric vehicles. In response to the energy crunch, the White House has released tens of millions of barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, bringing it down to about 400 million barrels, or the lowest levels in decades.
Democrats and President Joe Biden, meanwhile, have blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for the spike in prices and low supply.
There have also been concerns that the United States is running out of diesel. Oct. 21 data from the Energy Information show that the country had 25.9 days of diesel left.
“Russia produces a lot of heavy products, a lot of heavy oil that produce and yield more diesel,” GasBuddy’s Patrick de Haan told KGVO. “The other problem is simply demand post-COVID that has certainly recovered significantly with many trucks and many goods. We can all remember how ports have been stuffed full with goods that Americans have been buying and those all need to move out of port via trucks.”
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Madness: methane emissions tax will rip heart out of NZ farmers
It seems inconceivable that at a time of hyperinflation and global unrest, any government would deliberately destabilise the agricultural sector by introducing policies that would increase costs to primary producers, reduce production, and fuel price increases. Yet that’s what Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government is planning to do.
Our Prime Minister, the poster child of modern-day socialism, wants once again to boast on the world stage that she’s taking the lead in climate policy – this time by introducing a price on agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases.
That she wants the owners of ruminant livestock to pay a penalty for a by-product of a digestive process that is older than the dinosaurs, is madness personified.
Methane, an atmospheric trace gas, is part of an ancient natural cycle. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and using the green chlorophyll in their leaves combine it with water to trap the sun’s energy as food. When plant matter is eaten by ruminants, methane is produced, which breaks down into carbon dioxide and water vapour to continue the cycle.
Over three-quarters of the planet’s methane comes from natural sources such as wetlands, with the balance produced by landfills, rice paddies, and livestock. Since New Zealand has only one per cent of the world’s farmed ruminants the actual contribution of Kiwi livestock to methane in the atmosphere is almost too small to measure.
Announcing her plan, the Prime Minister boasted: “No other country in the world has yet developed a system for pricing and reducing agricultural emissions, so our farmers are set to benefit from being first movers. Cutting emissions will help New Zealand farmers to not only be the best in the world but the best for the world; gaining a price premium for climate friendly agricultural products while also helping to boost export earnings.”
In other words, the PM plans to tax the agricultural sector so heavily that by 2030 an estimated 20 per cent of sheep and beef farmers and five per cent of dairy farmers will be forced out of business.
Agriculture is New Zealand’s biggest industry, generating more than 70 per cent of our export earnings and about 12 per cent of our gross domestic product.
The impact of Ardern’s tax on the sector will be significant. Prices of homegrown protein – including milk, cheese, and meat – will undoubtedly rise as local production falls. Our crucial export returns will decline – by up to an estimated 5.9 per cent for dairy, 21.4 per cent for lamb, 36.7 per cent for beef, and 21.1 per cent for wool.
We can see the potential fallout by reminding ourselves of the consequences of a previous reckless decision by our Prime Minister when, without warning, she banned new offshore oil and gas exploration on the eve of a meeting of world leaders – so she could boast about her decisive climate change leadership.
That decision contributed to the closure of the Marsden Point Oil Refinery – with a loss of 240 local jobs and many hundreds more indirectly – leaving New Zealand dependent on imported fuel that we used to produce ourselves – and, paradoxically, increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Like that decision, this policy will have profound and widespread consequences, far beyond the damage to those farmers who are expected to be forced out of the industry; their departure will impact heavily on farm services, meat processing plants, local schools, and the other local businesses.
What’s even more irrational is that the forced exit of the world’s most emissions-efficient farmers will increase global emissions as other less efficient nations increase production to fill the gap.
The tax is being forced onto our productive sector at a time when almost 200 coal-fired power stations are under construction in Asia. The world’s major emitters of China and India have already admitted they’re not planning to take serious action on reducing emissions for up to fifty years, as they prioritise the economic wellbeing of their nations by expanding essential electricity supplies.
Robin Grieve – the Chairman of FARM (Facts About Ruminant Methane) and Pastural Farming Climate Research points out that the move is in contravention of the Paris Agreement which ruled out emission reductions that reduce food production.
“With farmers not able to take any useful actions to reduce emissions and avoid the tax, the Government’s scheme is only going to achieve emission reductions by increasing farm costs and pushing a percentage of farmers out of business,” he says. “The UN is acutely aware that previous climate policy initiatives, such as pushing biofuel use, resulted in mass starvation as food producing land was diverted to producing fuel. This was described by one UN committee as the greatest crime against humanity ever. Pushing New Zealand farmland out of food production and into forestry is the same thing.”
Federated Farmers Chairman Andrew Hoggard believes the plan will “rip the guts out of small town New Zealand, putting trees where farms used to be.”
He says the agricultural industry worked for two and a half years on a proposal which would honour the Paris Agreement by not reducing food production, but the Government then changed the rules: “It’s gut-wrenching to think we now have this proposal from government which rips the heart out of the work we did. Out of the families who farm this land. Our plan was to keep farmers farming. Now they’ll be selling up so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute as they drive off.”
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Winter kills you, not warmth
Global warming would SAVE lives, not cost them
People die daily from causes ranging from common ailments, such as heart disease, to rare occurrences, such as getting hit by lightning. But during which month do the most deaths happen in the United States?
The deadliest month in the U.S. is the one that heralds the New Year: January. An average of 251,699 people in the U.S. died in January every year between 2010 and 2020, according to a Live Science analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder database, which tracks how and when people die. In comparison, the averages for the other months for this time period range from 218,102 (August) to 242,475 (December), Live Science found.
Other analyses also find that January is the deadliest month in the U.S. According to an analysis of the CDC Wonder database by The Washington Post(opens in new tab), there were 40,000 to 60,000 more fatalities during January than August or September from 1999 to 2014.
Why is January so dangerous? According to the World Health Organization(opens in new tab) (WHO), the culprit could be the world's most prolific killer: heart disease, a 1999 study in the journal Circulation(opens in new tab) found, noting that heart conditions were more fatal during the winter months, especially January and February. More body heat is lost during the cold months, so the heart has to work harder, which creates extra stress for people with existing heart conditions, the British Heart Foundation(opens in new tab) reported.
https://www.livescience.com/deadliest-month-us
***********************************************************Engineering disaster: Remaking the Australian power grid to fail
Europe may be in the midst of a power crisis and memories of the chaos on the Australian grid in June still fresh, but that has not stopped billionaire activist Mike Cannon-Brookes and the state governments of Queensland and Victoria sowing the seeds of a major power disaster.
These players are engineering the closure of the bulk of the reliable coal-fired power supply of the eastern half of the continent within 13 years with nothing but intermittent renewable energy projects, most of which have yet to be built, to replace them.
To add to the air of fantasy which now pervades any decision involving energy in Australia, the Queensland and Victorian governments acknowledged that there has to be some means of storing energy for the changes to work, but then made proposals that were either completely inadequate (Queensland) or contained no details (Victoria).
To make matters worse the entire effort, including the many billions to be spent trying to replace coal power plants with wind and solar generators will have no benefit for Australia. As is widely known (except by Australian activists) few countries are paying much attention to their obligations under the Paris Agreement. Even those countries that have proved willing to undertake the major pain required to make real cuts in emissions (the UK and Germany) have backtracked in the past few months, thanks to the power crisis.
That means the sole result of all the money and effort spent on decarbonising the grid will be to make it more erratic and unreliable, and push power prices through the roof.
As was known before the announcements in September and October AGL’s 1.8-gigawatt Liddell power station in NSW will close in 2023, and its 2.6-gigawatt Bayswater plant will cease operations between 2030 and 2033. In addition, Origin Energy will shut the 2.8-gigawatt Eraring coal-fired power station in 2025, and Victoria’s Yallourn power station (1.48 GW, brown coal) is scheduled to close in 2028.
After a sustained campaign by Cannon-Brookes, who became AGL’s largest shareholder with the express purpose of getting the energy giant to accelerate closure of its coal plants, AGL has also announced they will shut the shut the 2.2-gigawatt Loy Yang A power station in Victoria’s La Trobe Valley in 2035, a decade earlier than planned.
At about the same time as the AGL announcement, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declared that her government would end the use of coal power in the state by 2035. There are eight coal-fired plants in the state, the newest of which is the 30-year-old 1.4-gigawatt Tarong station, which will now close more than a decade ahead of schedule.
Then in October, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews declared that if he is re-elected in the looming state election he will introduce tough new emission targets that are likely to end coal-powered electricity generation in the state by 2035.
To replace this gaping hole in generating capacity, the Palaszczuk government has announced that it will develop a $62 billion renewable energy ‘super grid’ which includes a new transmission line and two new pumped-hydro projects. About half of that investment is expected to be public money, including $9 billion from the state government and (hopefully) the rest from the federal government.
The plan commits to two new pumped-hydro power stations. The Borumba project, near Gympie, in south-east Queensland and the Pioneer-Burdekin project near Mackay. Borumba is expected to store the equivalent of 48 GWh but the only figure available for the Pioneer-Burdekin is the output figure of 7 GW (a facility which generates 7 GW for seven hours produces 49 GWh – commentators, activists and even government press releases routinely confuse GW and GWh).
Assuming the combined total storage will add up to 100 GWh, however, it is still equivalent to perhaps ten hours worth of operation by the coal plants the Palaszczuk government wants to close down. The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project, which is proving a ridiculously expensive white elephant, may add another 300 GWh, but these are all still inadequate amounts especially given the growing evidence of a weather phenomenon known as a wind drought.
As previously noted in this publication (‘Transition loses traction’, 9 July, 2022) there is evidence that wind can die across the whole of the National Energy Market (the east coast grid) for up to 33 hours – as far as anyone knows – meaning that it will require at least twice the amount of storage now either being built or in proposal documents to get through a wind drought period, and ideally several times that. Proper grid planning should also take into account major wind droughts occurring during periods of cloudy days and during rain droughts where there will not be much fresh water to fill the pumped-storage facilities.
In October, the Victorian government announced that it would revive the old State Electricity Commission but this time as a renewable energy agency with $1 billion to develop 4.5 GW worth of renewable energy projects. In late September the Victorian government had also announced that it would increase its renewable energy storage capacity target ‘to 6.3GW by 2035’, although it’s not clear from the announcement or any of the breathless media stories generated by it just how this target will be achieved, or even what it means. Does the Victorian government mean gigawatts or gigawatt hours? If it means gigawatt hours, it does not help very much. Three battery projects in various stages of development amounting to about one GWh are mentioned, and the state government is tipping in $167 million of taxpayer money, although it is not clear what the money is to be spent on. Otherwise, the announcement seems to be a statement of intentions.
While governments make muddled announcements about what they may be going to do, the power grid with its collection of aging fossil-fuel plants continues to stagger along somehow, and probably will until the Liddell plant ceases operation in 2023.
However, the June crisis in the power grid was in part due to the simultaneous failure of major coal-fired units. As the coal power stations are aging it is not surprising that they are off the grid, for one reason or another, more often. The forced closures will make such crises more likely and more frequent.
Instead of acknowledging this point, commentators descend into fantasy about how more renewables and extensive use of hydrogen will fix the problem. It seems that consumers must wait until they are left in the dark in freezing homes for extended periods until policy makers finally concede that renewables might not be the answer to everything.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/engineering-disaster/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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