Two writers on the Harvard Business Review blog claim that ESG (that is, adding environmental, social, and governance criteria to investment decisions) is not bad when you stick to the straight and narrow: identifying material risks from non-financial criteria. “To us, ESG is simply about identifying material risk factors that matter to company profitability and…
Tag: Oil and gas
Don’t Export Oil, Says Energy Secretary Granholm. After All, We Need It Here.
In an ironic move (although there are many such ironies these days) Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has written to seven large U.S. oil refiners asking them to hold back on their exports because fuel is needed in the U.S. East Coast. “But, Granholm has done nothing to help oil companies and refineries to be…
Wind and Solar Won Big, Says Robert Bryce. Here’s How Big.
“Big Wind and Big Solar won’t have to stop feeding at the federal trough for decades to come,” writes Robert Bryce in Forbes. In the gigantic bill just signed by the president: “[T]he tax credits for solar and wind are the most expensive energy-related provisions in the tax code. Between 2021 and 2031, the tax…
No, President Biden, Most of Those Shuttered Refineries Will Not Come Back
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) analyzed the condition of refining and concluded that most closed refining units will stay closed. “About 375,000 barrels per day of the 1.482 million barrels per day of North American refining capacity shuttered since June 2019 may be eligible for restart. President Biden could make it easier for these…
Ben Zycher on the Failings of Biden’s ‘New’ Oil and Gas Policy
Economist Ben Zycher reveals the “perversities, problematic assumptions, and wasteful outcomes made inevitable by the contradictions and incoherence of the Biden leasing policy.” Biden just announced a policy of allowing new leases but charging higher royalty rates. Here’s a summary of Zycher’s observations about this policy: The Biden administration will start leasing on 80 percent…
Is the Interior Department Leasing More Land for Oil and Gas than Trump Did?
An investigative report by Adam Federman in the Washington Post says that the Biden administration is issuing oil and gas permits at a rate faster than Trump did. “Between Jan. 20 and Oct. 31, the Bureau of Land Management [part of the Interior Department] approved 3,091 new onshore drilling permits—permits it could have deferred or…