Newsom Begs Energy Companies For Help With Energy Crisis
A popular folk tale from Western Bulgaria, a region known for its idiosyncratic humour, tells of two friends who went to market
One of them sold a cow and they started back to their village. On the way, they saw a frog.
The cow seller decided to play a joke on his friend and said “I’ll give you the money from the cow if you eat that frog.”
The friend thought he’d make some easy money and ate the frog. As they continued on their way, both got deep into thought.
The cow seller started worrying his wife would give him hell for losing the money so foolishly. The frog eater worried people will make fun of him.
Suddenly, they saw another frog by the road. “If you eat that frog, I’ll give you your money back,” the frog eater said. “Done,” the cow seller said and ate the frog. A little while later, the cow seller turned to his friend and asked “Hey, why did we eat the frogs?”
In modern times, the phrase “Why did we eat the frogs?” has become the go-to summary of a situation where effort was expended and no productive result was achieved.
Yet it is not Bulgaria that has produced the most brilliant example of frog-eating. It’s California and its Frog Eater Supreme, Gavin Newsom.
Newsom Courts Big Oil as Gas Prices Threaten Political Ambitions, Bloomberg reported this week in what is possibly the most Schadenfreude-inducing story of the quarter, and the only reason I don’t say it is the most Schadenfreude-inducing story of the year is that I have faith in the Newsoms of the world and they still have three whole months to outdo the original Newsom.
I don’t need to remind anyone what California under Newsom has been doing for years with the oil industry. Basically, the only thing it has not done is officially criminalising oil and gas production, and lining up energy executives and employees to be shot at dawn.
The natural result of this has been massive fuel price inflation and, recently, what media are calling an exodus of energy companies from the Golden State, apparently nicknamed so because of its “seemingly limitless possibilities”.
Indeed, California’s leadership has proven it has a virtually limitless capacity for producing counterproductive, damaging, illogical legislation in service to the singular purpose of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide while ignoring pressing problems such as homelessness and wildfire protection.
And now, that same leadership has gone and demonstrated, although it has not admitted, that it has been wrong in a remarkably consistent manner for years, inflicting substantial economic damage on its citizens.
Which is why they’re moving to Texas in droves, I hear. But let’s hear it from Bloomberg:
“Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom stood before Californians and declared the oil industry the “polluted heart of this climate crisis.”
Big Oil, he said, was lying, manipulating and profiteering. “They’re screwing you,” he added, after signing a bill to bolster oversight. Months later, one of Newsom’s top energy regulators was dispatched on a plane to America’s petroleum heartland, on a mission to placate the oil companies threatening to flee California.”
One could say irony doesn’t get more delicious than this but I’m waiting for the European Commission to send someone to beg Gazprom for gas for true scrumptiousness and don’t think it’s out of the question because there’s some self-respect left in Brussels.
There isn’t. Wait for the LNG money to run out and watch what happens. Anyway, I digress. Blame my ironic tooth.
So, after bad-mouthing Big Oil, after squeezing Big Oil with drilling bans, and after trying to mandate Big Oil to keep some fuel in stock to insure against “profiteering”, Newsom has first proposed easing new oil drilling procedures — in California! — and has now sent a representative cap in hand to the oil companies that are planning to leave the state to beg them to staaaaaay wiiiiiith meeee.
Sorry, couldn’t help it. And how could I, when “His regulators spent months working closely with the industry to come up with avenues to deregulate and increase profits.” From accusations of profiteering from California’s pain at the pump to looking for ways to increase profits in less than a year — now that’s a major achievement.
Meanwhile, one of the hallmarks of California’s proud crusade against emissions, the Ivanpah solar power plant in the Mojave Desert is about to be turned off because it has failed to produce the expected amounts of energy while costing an arm, a leg, and a lower jaw.
Or more precisely $2.2 billion, which has made it impossible for it to complete with cheaper PV, not to mention that it “never exceeded 75 percent of its planned electricity output and continues to depend on natural gas to operate.”
But Ivanpah had a much bigger problem: it “incinerated” thousands of birds every year. This must be the most expensive bird-killing machine in history, and a rather big frog to swallow.
Bloomberg notes in its report that “Newsom’s pivot is only a partial win for the industry,” because he had also tightened regulation on offshore drilling in the state and “A carbon trading program will force polluters to pay billions of dollars for greenhouse gas emissions over two decades.”
How long before that goes, too, to convince those filthy polluters to stay? Not very long, it seems.
As the head of Chevron’s downstream operations, Andy Walz, told the WSJ, relating a call he had with Newsom’s chief of staff regarding the new drilling bill, “I said, ‘Yeah, Nathan, all those are good, but we’ve got a long ways to go.’”
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