Fast And Furious -- US Crude Oil Production -- May 1, 2018 -- US Renewable Energy Incentives Drop Almost 60% Over Last Four Years

This is quite fascinating. A reader has put into perspective just how fast US crude oil production is growing -- look at this post from yesterday -- note that the US has set new weekly crude oil production records for the last twelve weeks out of thirteen.

The reader noted that at this pace of production growth, the US will see an increase of over 2.5 million barrels per day this year alone ... putting that into perspective, the OPEC oil production cuts of 1.2 million barrels per day have been less than half of that ...

Or another way to put that into perspective: that would be like the Dallas Cowboys winning twelve regular season games in thirteen weeks.

An interesting question to ask: had there not been a US shale oil revolution, would the price of oil have stimulated US off-shore oil production to the point that the US would now be seeing this type of production.

I don't know, and I don't know if the question can be satisfactorily answered.

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The Market, Energy, and Political Page, T+62

API US crude oil inventories: pending; 3:30 p.m. CDT today.

AAPL earnings: after market close today

US renewable energy incentives plunge: from oilprice.com --

Total renewable-related federal subsidies in the United States dropped to $6.7 billion in financial year 2016 from $15.5 billion in 2013.

Subsidies for renewable energy, including biofuels, accounted for between 42 percent and 52 percent of total federal energy subsidies in each of the years 2013 through 2016.

Tax and direct expenditures combined accounted for around 93 percent of all federal renewable-related subsidies for each of the years analyzed. In FY 2016, tax expenditures alone accounted for 80 percent of total renewable energy subsidies.

Comment: see article to see how little US incentives actually went to R&D. Incentives for renewable energy were almost 100% related to tax incentives. On the other hand, the fossil fuel sector received non-tax incentives (like university research grants).

Between fiscal years 2013 and 2016, direct federal financial interventions and subsidies in U.S. energy markets almost halved, from $29 billion in FY 2013 to $15 billion in FY 2016.

U.S. federal subsidy support for fossil fuels plunged from nearly $4 billion in 2013 to $489 million in 2016.

Road to Germany: note the renewable energy incentives story above --  total renewable-related federal subsidies in the United States dropped to $6.7 billion in financial year 2016 from $15.5 billion in 2013. That represents about a 57% drop in renewable energy incentives. The political environment suggests this is not likely to change over the next couple of years.

Now, what happened in Germany when renewable energy incentives plunged? See this post.

After the German government decided to reduce subsidies to the solar industry in 2012, the industry nose-dived. By this year, virtually every major German solar producer had gone under as new capacity declined by 90 per cent and new investment by 92 per cent. Some 80,000 workers — 70 per cent of the solar workforce — lost their jobs. Solar power’s market share is shrinking and solar panels, having outlived their usefulness, are being retired without being replaced.Wind power faces a similar fate.

Germany has some 29,000 wind turbines, almost all of which have been benefitting (sic) from a 20-year subsidy program that began in 2000.

Starting in 2020, when subsidies run out for some 5,700 wind turbines, thousands of them each year will lose government support, making the continued operation of most of them uneconomic based on current market prices.

2013: and then look at this  -- this is the most-viewed page when searching "Germany" on the blog --
Germany looking to stop wind energy initiatives sooner than later -- Bloomberg; wind energy has killed Germany's manufacturing base.