Natural Gas Now Best Picks – August 26, 2023

Natural Gas Now Best Picks – August 26, 2023

Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

This week: extreme weather hysteria redux, Biden the Manchurian White House occupant, China moves to protect its energy security and much more.

Look for these stories below, including links to the original articles!

Extreme Weather? Nah…Not at All If You Bother to Check

One thing we’ve learned over the last several years, fighting for natural gas, is how easily false narratives fall off the lips of those with climate agendas. Here is the pushback:

This has been the summer of “extreme heat,” with the phrase being used over and over in news coverage as if to signal that a climate emergency has arrived.

We’re told 2023 is on track to be the hottest year on record, while two-thirds of Americans in a PBS/Marist Pollnow say Climate Change is affecting the weather.

Denver resident Mike Barela said, “People are starting to realize that there is an effect.” Miami resident Stephen Escudero said, “This definitely feels like we’re in that point of no return that people have talked about for a long time.”

Some are calling on President Biden to declare a ‘climate emergency’ after the deadly Maui wildfire and a summer of searing temperatures.

And UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for immediate action on climate change, saying, “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.”

Weather history, however, tells a different story – that the worst weather events, including the hottest years, have all been in the past.

The worst hurricane in history? The Great Hurricane of 1780, which killed over 20,000 people in the Caribbean.

The worst wildfire in U.S. history? The Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin in 1871 killed at least 1,500 people and burned over a million acres.

The worst flood in world history was in 1931 – the Yangtze River Flood in China, which killed almost 4 million people.

The worst flood in U.S. history was in 1889, in Johnston, Pennsylvania.

The deadliest tornado in recorded U.S. history was in 1925. The Tri-State Tornado, which struck Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing some 700 people.

And the hottest year was not 2023, but 1936.  In 1936, 21 states had their all-time temperature records.

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Headline from Cincinnati Enquirer, July 17, 1936

Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com said, “We know in the United States that the 1930s were extremely hot – 1936 is the hottest year on record in the United States and probably throughout the northern Hemisphere.”

Some northern cities saw temperatures between 115 and 120 degrees that year. Many thousands died across the country and the resulting Dust Bowl forced the migration of 3 and half million climate refugees out of the Great Plains and Midwest.

All true and completely contrary to the climate scare “green eggs and scam” agenda threatened by natural gas, which is why the facts are buried by a mainstream press aligned with the big money schemers promoting fiat fuels.

Hat Tip: J.C.

Biden, the Manchurian President Bows to China Yet Again

Joe Biden is completely under the thumb of China due to the sale of influence for cash he, his son, and the rest of his family took from that communist dictatorship. That’s why he never does anything Xi doesn’t want and why he works so assiduously to kill natural gas with phony climate measures and corporatist giveaways of green eggs and scam.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, as the White House has called for, will almost assuredly make the United States dependent on China while enriching it.

China currently holds a commanding position in the clean energy industry, controlling the natural resources and manufacturing the components essential to the Biden administration’s desired alternative energy transition. Energy experts believe that its dominance will become more entrenched in the years ahead because of domestic environmentalist opposition to perceived “dirty” mining and refining operations, and the Biden administration’s “clean energy” spending blitz – which could provide Chinese companies and subsidiaries billions in subsidies. 

The Biden administration also considers it imperative to get buy-in from Beijing on dramatically reducing emissions, given it produces more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. 

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Biden crime family at work?

This too gives critics of the Biden administration’s green agenda pause. They see China as an unreliable partner that will leverage the Biden administration’s desire for it to go green to its own advantage. 

“China,” says Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.), the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, “is playing us for suckers.”

Hat Tip: R.N.

Unlike Joe Biden’s America,
China Believes in Energy Security and Natural Gas

While Joe Biden sleeps, only briefly awakening to condemn natural gas, China is ensuring  their energy security:

China is expanding its presence in the global LNG trading world, with Chinese traders setting up new or expanding their trading desks in Singapore and London, Reuters writes.

This would put China in direct competition with LNG trade leaders including Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, and Equinor, the report pointed out.

The trading presence expansion comes even as China secures more long-term supply of the superchilled fuel, the latest deals coming from Qatar and the United States.

Even so, Chinese importers are not relying on long-term deals only, even if they have swelled to some 40 million tons annually since last year. The amount represents a 50% increase.

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Chinese LNG carrier

Per the Reuters report, more than 10 Chinese energy trading companies are hiring more traders or expanding their trading desks while state-owned CNOOC plans to open an office in London.

Speaking of CNOOC, the Chinese major said this month that Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project will start production as scheduled before the end of this year. CNOOC has a 10% stake in the Russian project.

“We’re going to see a paradigm shift in Chinese companies from being total net importers to (being) more international and domestic trading players,” said Trident LNG head of global trading, Toby Copson, as quoted by Reuters.

The core motive for the trading presence expansion appears to be energy security—the focus of China’s energy policies.

“Supply security is still at the heart of our business activities. Trading capability is one of the enablers … to help us better deal with market swings,” according to PetroChina International’s global head of LNG trading, Zhang Yaoyu.

As a result of this expansion, Reuters notes, the total volume of LNG contracted by Chinese traders could reach 100 million tons annually by 2026. That would mean an excess supply of some 8 million tons for that year, per Poten & Partners. On the other hand, ICIS sees the amount as falling short of demand by 5-6 million tons.

More proof China is taking us for suckers.

Hat Tip: D.S.

And, Briefly…

CA Delays Gas Plant Closures Again, Due to Demand, from S.H.

Stop the Cooking Oil, from D.S.

Hot or Not: Obama Guy Steven Koonin Questions Climate Science, from R.N.

We Are Exiting An Ice Age, from T.C.

China’s Abandoned Electric Cars Pile Up, from D.S.

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