Boston Importing LNG From Russia; Pocahontas Seems Oblivious -- December 30, 2018

From a reader:

The Belgian LNG ship 'Exemplar' is currently laying off the Massachusetts coast awaiting to offload a shipment of LNG that originated from Yamal and was lifted at a French port.

Crazy and expensive way to keep the lights on in Boston!

We're still vacationing in northeastern New Mexico. It makes it difficult to blog and, worse, the demons return, questioning why I continue to blog. If I continue to blog (and I will) it is because of the notes I receive from readers like the one above. 

 

Going into the new year, I have three choices:

1. discontinue blogging; I've achieved my original objective
2. continue to blog, but a different format, different method
3. no changes, or minimal changes

The first choice is off the board. I will not quit blogging about the Bakken. 

 

I'm leaning strongly toward the second, but my hunch is that no one will notice. The one "constant" will be the Bakken data:

• the daily activity report
• the monthly NDIC hearing dockets

To keep the Bakken data in perspective, the other "constants" will include:

• the EIA's weekly petroleum report
• the RBN Energy daily blog

After that, I'm not sure where I will go with the blog. 

 

*****************************

New Links

There are two new links, from the same source, the EIA. The Year in Review. 

• the Electric Power Annual 2017
• average price of electricity to ultimate customers

I always find it interesting how things turn out. 

 

Last night I was reviewing the "average price of electricity" in the US and noted that electricity in North Dakota costs almost exactly half what it costs in Boston. Residential, numbers rounded/KWh:

• North Dakota:  10 cents
• Boston: 20 cents

What an incredibly unfair regressive tax leveled on the poor and the middle class. If one lives in North Dakota, and your monthly electricity bill is $150, all things being equal one would pay $300 in Boston. 

There's a glut of natural gas in the US. North Dakota, and I assume Texas, is flaring record amounts of natural gas. There's no "national" sense of urgency to help the middle class when it comes to energy. Ayn Rand's heroes could solve the problem overnight but the faux environmentalists and Deep State do what they can to slow things down. 

Be that as it may. Look at the costs of electricity across the US at the link above. 

Most interesting data point: in the Pacific Northwest where electricity should be practically "free" due to all hydroelectric power, it's about the same as in North Dakota:

• Oregon: 11 cents (higher than North Dakota)
• Washington State: 10 cents (slightly lower than North Dakota)

California, lumped with Oregon and Washington by the EIA, almost double North Dakota at 18 cents.

Texas, where electricity costs are going up due to "renewable energy" initiatives still hangs in there at 11 cents. There's a lot of "competition" to keep electric prices down in Texas, but the 'renewable energy" scam is a huge threat.