Bureau Of Ocean Energy Management -- Thank You -- January 28, 2022

 

Old news by now; US federal judge annulled the government's massive GoM lease sale last November, 2021, on ground that the BOEM "broke environmental law." The was the biggest oil and gas lease ever in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Companies will be reimbursed. 

Analysis:

• analysts talk about need for oil companies to show restraint; not drill so much; focus on free cash flow and return cash to investors;
• nothing like vacating the biggest oil and gas lease ever to force these Big Oil companies to show restraint and quit drilling;
• they will have to increase activity in onshore shale to make up shortfall. Whoo-hoo.
  

Today: 

• WTI: surges 2.30% at already high prices
• up $2.00
• now trading solidly above $88.
• at this rate, up $2.00 / day, WTI will over $100 in six days (tongue in cheek; don't take seriously) 

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Hydrogen As A Transportation Fuel

Cliff's notes:

• hydrogen comes from electrolysis of water
• apply electricity to H2O to get hydrogen and oxygen
• that really, really, really takes a lot of electricity and is really, really, really expensive
• to make electrolysis even remotely competitive with conventional fuel sources, need inexpensive power source
• the most inexpensive power source, the dirtiest of the dirty: lignite
• [imagine the loss of energy going from lignite to electrolysis]
• definitions:
• brown hydrogen: "made" from coal, currently, generally lignite;
• blue hydrogen: "made" from natural gas
• green hydrogen: "made" from high-cost, high-energy wind towers and solar panels, energy

niche:

• hydrogen will have huge niche, particularly in forklifts in warehouses; clean; minimal maintenance;
• but almost all that hydrogen will come from fossil fuel for the next twenty years

Link here to Australian story about using lignite to make hydrogen.