Non-Bakken Energy Stories; US Fracking Killed European Solar Industry -- Bosch

Keystone XL Likely To Be Approved By State Department Later This Year

The Washington Times is reporting:

The U.S. State Department is expected to give the Keystone XL pipeline the go-ahead later this year after reviewing environmental concerns.

But 51% of voters think it is possible to build the pipeline in a way that doesn’t significantly damage the environment. That’s up from 46% measured in late January but is still down from 67% in November 2011. Twenty-four percent (24%) feel it is not possible to go ahead with the pipeline without hurting the environment, while another 24% are not sure.

Sixty percent (60%) still believe building the Keystone pipeline will be good for the U.S. economy. Just seven percent (7%) think it will be bad for the economy. Twenty percent (20%) feel it will have no impact, and 14% are undecided.  These findings have changed little from previous surveys.

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Sierra Club: President's Approval of the Keystone XL 50-50

The Dickinson Press is reporting.

“I think we’re going to get an answer from the State Department or the White House in October and I put its odds of being approved at 50 percent right now,” said Marx, director of the club’s Beyond Oil campaign. “It literally could go either way. I think the president understands that this issue is catching fire. If he gives the green light to this project, the climate movement is going to go ballistic.”

Don sent me the link. My initial thoughts:

1. I think this is a trial balloon. In politics they do this all the time. The Sierra Club releases this "50%" press release for several reasons. First, to see what the pushback is. If there is not a lot of pushback, it means that the rank and file have accepted that the president will approve it. It gives John Kerry and Barack Obama the political cover they need. They will be approving something even the diehards have accepted as "going to happen."  Their approval will be a non-story for the "man-on-the-street." Even the NY Times, I'm sure, is tired of this story.

Second: this energizes the rank and file of the Sierra Club members; my hunch is a lot of rank and file Sierra Club members have lost their enthusiasm for this battle. 

Third, they will see what "new" arguments will come from the rank and file. Both sides can adapt to honing new arguments. 

Fourth, this is a veiled message from the Sierra Club to the president: although the rank and file diehards and the most activist environmentalists will go ballistic, those at the top and the more reasonable environmentalists are telling the president "we can live with your  approval; after all, you have almost no choice." We can litigate it to death in Nebraska, and Texas.

2.  The quote:

"If [the president] gives the green light to [the Keystone XL], the climate movement is going to go ballistic.”

The fringe element of the climate movement is going to go ballistic, but if anyone has been following the monthly initial unemployment claims, one will see that the economy/jobs market has gone absolutely nowhere for the past four years (scroll through the linked post). Even President Obama has to have noted that. Even Mortimer Zuckerman has seen how bad things are. Regardless of the spin Bloomberg, Yahoo, and Reuters put on the numbers each month, the fact is that job growth has gone absolutely nowhere in the last four years. But it will get worse: folks are forgetting that when ObamaCare kicks in a lot of folks are going to be laid off. Sibelius knows this and the president knows this. On top of this, the sequester job loss in the federal government has not been fully felt.

3. I think the October date is interesting. I think the President realizes the 2014-mid-term elections could be a debacle. If gasoline prices are going up and he denies the Keystone XL permit, the mid-term elections are going to be horrendous for him. Remember: Bakken oil is costing the consumer $100/bbl; Canadian oil is selling for, maybe, $60/bbl. Even Jay Leno's streetwalkers can do the math. Well, maybe they can't. Making the announcement in October is long enough for the activist environmentalists to cool down by the following November (13 months away); but early enough to allow Democratic nominees in energy states to have at least some chance of winning, campaigning on the President's answer to energy: "we support all of the above."

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US Fracking Killed European Solar Industry

Bloomberg is reporting:

Bosch, one of the world's largest auto parts suppliers, blames the U.S. fracking boom in shale gas for hurting demand for energy-efficient green technologies, its chairman told a German newspaper. 

The Stuttgart-based company recently decided to discontinue its photovoltaic solar energy activities at the cost of roughly 3,000 jobs - due largely, but not entirely, to a glut in capacity built up in China.

"Photovoltaic is going through a unique transition. But you cannot entirely dismiss that the use of energy-efficient technologies came under pressure through fracking in the United States," Bosch Chairman Franz Fehrenbach said in the Sunday weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. 

Sounds like a lot of sour grapes to me. Perhaps Bosch should have gotten into fracking technology. It appears that the Germany solar industry was no longer viable when the tax incentives were removed. The more I read Bloomberg, the more I am (negatively) impressed with its "objective" reporting, and failure to do any really in-depth or investigative reporting.

Germany, because of the energy situation, is in deep do-do, as they say.

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It Never Quits

  

I try so hard to minimize stories on global warming, and now global cooling, but it just never quits. Here's another one. CNBC is reporting:

Abnormally cold weather curbs consumer demand for spring goods and apparel, but some companies, including drug chains and dollar stores, are benefiting from the spring's delay. 

"Right now, March is trending the coldest since 1996 in the U.S. It's also the snowiest March since 2002," said Evan Gold, senior vice president of client services at Planalytics, a company that analyzes how weather affects consumer demand.

Consumers were shopping very differently the weeks leading up to Easter this year than they were a year ago. Last year, March was the warmest on record for more than 100 years, Gold said. This year's shoppers were not after summer dresses and sunglasses. Planalytics evaluated that demand for shorts fell 12 percent in the fourth week of March versus a year ago and 9 percent for sandals. Interest in lawn and garden items fell 21 percent, delaying the most lucrative season for home improvement stores.

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Israel  / Natural Gas

Updates

September 17, 2015: natural gas fields killed Israel's solar energy industry. No matter how little CO2 Israel emitted, it would make no difference at all globally; they need to do what is prudent.

September 16, 2015: when this story was first posted, there was jubilation in the streets of Tel Aviv. Not only might Israel be energy independent, it might have tons of natural gas to sell to Egypt. Not so fast. Egypt discovered their own huge natural gas field, dashing Israel's hopes for natural gas sales to Egypt. 

Original Post

 

Israel to start off-shore natural gas production. Bloomberg is reporting:

The Tamar (9 trillion cubic feet) and Dalit fields could supply Israel with gas for two decades. The larger Leviathan field is estimated to hold 18 trillion cubic feet of gas ...will reach Israel’s port city of Ashdod by afternoon today ...

But that's not what caught my attention (Don sent me the link):

The three fields provide Israel with reserves more than 14 times larger than Germany’s total proven gas reserves ...

Population of Israel: 8 million
Population of Germany: 80 million

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Carpe Diem and The Texas Job Explosion

From CarpeDiem:

The Texas Workforce Commission reported yesterday that the state added an eye-popping 80,600 jobs during the month of February, at a rate of more than 4,000 new jobs every business day of the month. That’s the highest monthly employment gain for the Lone Star State back to at least 1990, and possibly the highest monthly job gain since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking such data in 1939, according to the Dallas Morning News. 

The 80,600 job gain in Texas last month means that more than one out of every three of the 236,000 jobs added to US payrolls in February were in Texas, even though the state represents only 8.3% of the nation’s population. 

As usual, the comments are entertaining.

There are a lot of nice golf courses in Texas. It would be nice for the president to take advantage of that.  He could announce approval of the Keystone XL while vacationing in the Lone Star State. Speaking of which, I assume we should start hearing plans for the Obama Presidential Library.  My hunch is it will be in Illinois, perhaps across the street from the Lincoln Home NHS in Springfield, Illinois. The Nobel Peace Prize.

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Is It Just Me, Or Does It Seem Folks Are Looking For Things To Worry About?

• The Cyprus story turned into a non-story. That pretty much goes for the PIIGS also.

• The North Korean "crisis" is hardly worthy of being called a crisis. Yes, it could be a painful first 72 hours for South Korea if North Korea unleashed, but within 24 hours North Korea would be no more -- at least not the capital and any military base.

• Global warming: 1 degree over one century; and now there is strong evidence the earth has not warmed in 16 years, maybe 20 years, and there is evidence that the earth is now cooling.  

• Fracking causing earthquakes.

• Peak oil.