Tuesday, October 17, 2023



Politico Finally Faces Reality When It Comes to Biden Draining Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Earlier this year, Townhall reported on the Biden administration's decision to siphon off millions of barrels of oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in a political effort to help Democrats in the midterms after Biden and his forced energy "transition" saw strict limits placed on U.S. oil production and the cancelation of infrastructure projects to support oil and gas development.

Back in July, the SPR held 346,758,000 barrels of oil in its underground tanks located in Texas and Louisiana that have the capacity to hold 714,000,000 barrels, according to the Department of Energy. That is, America's emergency backup supply of oil was drained to being more than half empty by Biden in response to an "emergency" that his energy agenda had created.

And even though Townhall has been reporting on Biden's self-inflicted energy crisis and his drastic response to artificially apply pressure to keep prices lower after the national average for a gallon of gas hit its all-time high in the summer of 2022, it appears some in the mainstream media are starting to see the problem with Biden's use of the SPR.

"An energy crisis spawned by a Middle East war 50 years ago spurred the U.S. to create a huge crude oil stockpile to shield the country from threats by unfriendly nations," reminded Politico in a story on the SPR published Monday. "Now the oil lying in half-filled salt caverns along the Gulf Coast is posing a political quandary for President Joe Biden."

Now, apparently, there's concern that "the reserves’ diminished volumes limit Biden’s options to respond to a future shock to the oil markets, including those that could result from a widening of the war in the Middle East," Politico noted.

...having a full reserve would have given the White House a freer hand to enforce sanctions blocking Iran’s oil exports, said Bob Ryan, analyst at BCA Research.

The relatively low levels in the SPR “leaves the U.S. in a position of relying on Saudi Arabia and others with spare capacity to ramp supply in the event of a cutoff” of Iranian oil, Ryan said in an email.

The administration has insisted it’s continuing to enforce the economic sanctions that former President Donald Trump imposed on Iran in 2018. But analysts monitoring oil shipments say Iranian exports have risen sharply on Biden’s watch.

It doesn't help that Biden has already been shown to have a weak hand when it comes to requesting increases in the amount of oil from OPEC+, being embarrassed more than once when his begging was rejected by the oil-rich collective of countries. Instead of pumping more oil into the economy, as Biden has requested, OPEC+ has rejected America's requests and even cut production in an added blow to Biden's strategy.

With a less than half-full SPR, as Politico's source explained, Biden has fewer options to hold our country's foes accountable for violating such embargoes. It's another point of weakness for the Biden administration and one that could be fixed by ramping up U.S. energy production and green-lighting the development projects he killed off. The U.S. doesn't need to rely on other countries — and didn't when Biden took office — to increase the supply of oil and gas flowing around the world.

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Wyoming's Electric Buses Constantly Break Down, Crippling Transit

By replacing its fleet of diesel-powered buses with sleek (and taxpayer-subsidized) electric buses, the transit system run by Jackson and Teton County, Wyoming, was set to transition to a green, “climate-friendly” future.

Instead, all eight electric buses purchased by Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) have broken down, and when any of the vehicles will be up and running again is anyone’s guess. Help is not going to be on its way anytime soon because California-based Proterra, the company that manufactured the defective buses, has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once a darling of the Biden administration’s vaunted “energy transition,” the company cannot say when – if ever – spare parts will come to the rescue.

“We’re evaluating our options to see how we can work through that and make sure they can be on the road,” START Director Bruce Abel told Cowboy State Daily (Sept. 26). Local officials are bracing for a long wait, with Jackson Councilman Jimbo Rooks saying the company’s bankruptcy was “a real punch in the gut.”

START still has 23 diesel buses in its fleet, which are working fine. But the electric buses were plagued with problems as soon as they went into service. Winters in Wyoming can be cold, and EV batteries do not perform to standard in freezing temperatures, a fact perspective EV buyers should consider before they shell out real money for these vehicles. Specifically, EV batteries’ efficiency declines markedly in cold weather, curtailing EVs’ already limited range. What’s more, the batteries needed to power electric buses and trucks are so heavy that they tear up roads and bridges at an alarming rate, adding to the infrastructure problems associated with EVs.

Biden and Granholm: Fans of Proterra

Proterra CEO Gareth Joyce could provide little more than a boilerplate when trying to explain his company’s misfortunes, saying in a press release that the company faced “various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to efficiently scale all our opportunities simultaneously.” He didn’t say why the buses he supplied to his customer in Wyoming broke down.

This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out. The company got its mitts on some of the $5.5 billion in federal handouts for low- and no-emission bus manufacturers contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, along with the cash it got from investors eager to plow money into green projects. As noted by the Cowboy State Daily, President Joe Biden participated in a virtual tour of the company in 2021.

“The fact is, you’re making me look good,” Biden said before touting his plan to provide 50,000 charging stations nationwide.

Biden isn’t the only member of his administration to be a fan of Proterra. Jennifer Granholm invested in the company and sold her stake AFTER she became Biden’s energy secretary for a net capital gain of $1.6 million. She got out before the roof fell in.

On the Road with the Energy Secretary

Granholm’s eagerness to plug EVs led her on an ill-fated, four-day road trip from Charlotte to Memphis in June that included a testy exchange with local law enforcement officers in North Carolina. An Energy Department staffer, prudently driving a gasoline-power car, blocked a family in an EV from recharging to allow Granholm to recharge her vehicle first.

On September 25, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Granholm’s EV excursion.

“This taxpayer-funded publicity stunt illustrates yet again how out of touch the Biden administration is with the consequences of policies it has unleashed on everyday Americans,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-KY, and fellow committee member Pat Fallon, R-TX, wrote in a letter to Granholm.

The committee demanded information by Oct. 10 about the purpose, costs, and planning of the trip, which covered 770 miles. Comer and Fallon also requested a staff-level briefing by Oct. 3, The Washington Times reported (Sept. 27).

Don’t look for a prompt response from Granholm and her minions.

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Largest EV Charging Station In World Powered By Diesel Generators

The Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world. But to provide that kind of power takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators.

In 2017, Tesla CEO said that all Superchargers in the automaker’s network were being converted to solar. “Over time, almost all will disconnect from the electricity grid,” Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer discovered that the station was powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station. Reporters at SF Gate tried to find out how much of the station's electricity was from the generators, but couldn’t get a response from Tesla.

The station isn’t connected to any dedicated solar farms, which means that absent the diesel generators, the station is powered by California’s grid.

According to the U.S. Energy and Information Administration, in June 2023, natural gas supplied nearly 5,000 megawatt hours of electricity in California, whereas non-hydroelectric renewables supplied about 7,250 megawatt hours.

Another Case

Energy analyst and writer David Blackmon, author of the “Energy Transition Absurdities,” told Cowboy State Daily that the use of diesel-powered generators is not limited to the Harris Ranch station.

He used to shop at a Whole Foods in Houston. The company had installed a charging station in front of the store for its customers. “It was the best parking spot in the lot, and it crowded out a bunch of handicap spaces,” Blackmon said.

He said there were diesel generators behind the store and whenever someone was using the chargers, the generators would kick on.

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EV Battery Factory Will Require So Much Energy It Needs A Coal Plant To Power It

A new electric vehicle battery factory in Kansas is demanding so much energy that the state is delaying the retirement of a coal plant to make sure the facility has enough power.

The Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV.

The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels.

The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s roughly the amount of power needed for a small city.

In testimony to the the Kansas City Corporation Commission, … , a representative of Evergy, the utility serving the factory, said that the 4 million-square-foot Panasonic facility creates “near term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective,” according to the newspaper.

[As a result] the utility will continue to burn coal at a power plant near Lawrence, Kansas, and it will delay plants to transition units at the plant to natural gas.

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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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