Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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

Some nice perspective from down under on all those transition deadlines:

Solar and wind power still provide just a tiny share of the world’s total energy. They also struggle to replicate the reliability of oil and gas: today’s best rechargeable batteries for renewables have only a fraction of the energy density of hydrocarbons from gas and oil; so until this problem is rectified, there will always be a place for gas and oil.

Cabot Oil & Gas

As the US states of California and Texas experienced last northern summer and winter respectively, power grids became less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar that is not capable of providing power 24/7. As a result, it was (of all things) coal power and diesel-fuel generators that were deployed to rescue both states. It is true that renewable prices have fallen dramatically in recent times. However, as Professor Yergin argues, the supposed affordability of renewables is often due to taxpayer-subsidy programs.

Ditto electric vehicles.

None of this is to deny that the developed world has reduced its carbon footprint. Take the US: since 2005, emissions have declined by 15 per cent thanks to not just increases in solar and wind but the “shale revolution”, otherwise known as fracking, as natural gas has replaced coal as the top fuel source for electricity generation. As a result, America is not just the world’s largest oil producer, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia, but it is also energy independent for the first time in generations.

The only thing real about those 2030 and 2050 deadlines for transitioning to net-zero is the fact we know all of the politicians setting them have carefully put the target dates well beyond the point where they’ll need to care about them anymore. Call it artful lying.

Hat Tip: C. W.

Bettering Human Lives: What A Concept!

Chris Wright, the Liberty Oilfield Services CEO from Texas who so successfully pushed back against Northface for its hypocrisy has put together an incredibly good report on his company, the industry and our future that truly requires reading, although it’s quite long. Several natural gas items and basic truths uttered caught our attention, beginning with this statement from Wright:

“It is simply not possible to discuss the environmental and social impacts of our industry without considering the environmental and human impacts of the absence of our industry.“

This is just the beginning of the straight talk to be found in this wonderful document. Here is something else that jumped out:

If you miss the sign, you will notice no change in the countryside while driving north from Susquehanna County Pennsylvania into Broome County New York. Nothing in the subsurface geology changes either. Job opportunities, tax revenues, and opportunities for small businesses, however, change dramatically. Susquehanna County is booming with Marcellus Shale natural gas production. Broome County has zero Marcellus Shale natural gas production. The facts below highlight the stark differences across the two local communities.

Nice, but there’s so much more. We’ll be quoting further from the report further down the road but, in the meantime, notice how Liberty has turned the Environmental Social Governance (ESG) mandate intended to put everyone and everything under the thumb of leftists has been so effectively been turned on its head by Liberty to mean precisely what it should mean; simply “bettering human lives.” Bravo!

Hat Tip: G.M.

CDL Drivers in Huge Demand Thanks to Natural Gas Industry

We’re told Cabot Oil & Gas could use 50 more CDL drivers right now and a very special training them as fast as possible:

Businesses across the country and in our region are looking for qualified CDL drivers. Students across the region are looking to help fill some of those positions…

18-year-old Hunter Talcott of Tunkhannock is looking to get his CDL license. He is going through the proper training at Susquehanna County Career and Technology Center’s CDL program to get him there.

“I’m actually going for be a lineman. But they said get your permit before, so I figured I’d do the whole thing,” Talcott explained…

Students are getting hands on experience during their second week of the five-week program.

“It’s unbelievable how many jobs there are. I mean I pretty much go do anything with a CDL,” said Steven Bognatz, a student in SCCTC’s CDL program.

According to the American Trucking Association there will be a truck driver shortage of more than 100,000 by 2023. To help drive that number down Cabot Oil and Gas donated $40,000 to SCCTC to help students pay for training.

A beautiful thing that explains why Upstate New York is dying while the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania is gaining every day.

Hat Tip: W.D.

PA Guy Says NY “Drove Prosperity Away”

Another nice poem by our friend and Upstate New Yorker, Aaron Price:

It would all be exported overseas!
Another lie someone told me.
If I leased my land,
(You greedy man!)
People would die!

Well, I’m doing fine.
And so, in a way,
(I don’t exaggerate)
Is the community.

Oh, for the truth,
To see what prosperity can do!
Drive from Susquehanna County, PA
To Upstate New York and think,
How does that Upstate land look to you?

We have work in front of us in PA;
But our taxes pay for more.
We allowed the shale to work;
You criticized me as a greedy landowner,
Shamed me!  But it’s better than before.

So I don’t mind “being in the wrong!
I will let everyone else “be right!”
But I kind of laugh to myself,
That Upstate land, what a sight!

My friends in PA,
Look at those poor people in Upstate.
Hey, we’re the “Common Wealth!”
People of Upstate,
You just keep driving prosperity away!

How true it is!