Saudi Oil Giant CEO says world should abandon the fantasy of living without oil

By Jo Nova

The clean energy revolution is failing, and everyone knows it

In a radical move, the CEO of an oil giant actually defended oil. For a brief moment the space-time continuum opened a worm hole to reality, and leaders of some of the world’s largest corporations briefly said sensible things.

The energy transition is falling apart so fast, even the prime targets of hate, the Big Oil Men themselves, are now openly pointing out what a waste of time and money solar and wind power are. BP was trying to cut oil production 40% until very recently when it flipped to increasing it. But now we have a whole conference of Big Oil.

Saudi Aramco CEO says energy transition is failing, world should abandon ‘fantasy’ of phasing out oil

By Spencer Kimball, CNBC

HOUSTON — Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said Monday that the energy transition is failing and policymakers should abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas, as demand for fossil fuels is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

“In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides […]

BP lost $1b in wind power and just flipped from cutting oil by 40% to increasing it

By Jo Nova

There’s no hiding that this is a major backflip

History books will be written about corporate mistakes.

Twenty years ago BP called itself “Beyond Petroleum” and by 2020 the company was hellbent on getting there. They pledged to reduce their own oil production by 40% by 2030, and promised to pivot into renewable power. The media was thrilled — “BP Shuns Fossil Fuels“, said Politico, and shines a light on “stranded oil and gas”. Only two years ago BP talked of “accelerating” it’s green investments. Then the price of oil and gas exploded and problems with unreliable energy started breeding.

Now BP is writing off a billion dollars in offshore wind investment, and the new CEO is calling for “pragmatism”. The company has flipped from cutting oil production 40% by 2030 to increasing it instead.

The new chief, Murray Achincloss said they still want to be “an integrated energy company” (presumably so it looks less like a full-reverse and more like a “tweak”), but he betrayed himself when he said: “we see growing demand for energy right now across the globe”. “It is not slowing down.” When he says energy, he means oil and gas.

BP to […]

If fossil fuels come from fossils, why have scientists found them on one of Saturn’s moons?

By Jo Nova

They didn’t tell us, the term “fossil fuels” might be wrong too

Dr Willie Soon unleashes on the failures of climate change and modern science for 40 minutes with Tucker Carlson (see below). As an opening he explained how one of Saturn’s moons has more liquid fuel than than all the oil and gas deposits of Earth, which rather pokes a hole in the idea that fossil fuels are only ever made from fossils.

Essentially a frozen, lifeless moon with no dinosaurs, forests or peat bogs, somehow has lakes of methane. Not only does Titan have liquid seas of hydrocarbon fuel — but we’ve known this for years. In fact even in 2005 a NASA scientist quietly admitted that Titan had methane that wasn’t made from fossils. But where was NASA in the 18 years since?

Soon explains that Titan proves that abiotic oil and gas formation is true. In 2009 an experiment showed that when methane is put under great pressure like the kind we find 50-100 miles underground, it can form more complex hydrocarbons. (Kolesnikov). Several papers in the last dozen years find more exotic kinds of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons all over the place, […]

UN admits World will crash through Paris Agreement goals by a factor of two for 2030

By Jo Nova

Top 20 Energy mining nations are planning to increase production, not decrease it.

Despite 151 nations signing the Paris Agreement, the UNEP has all but admitted that most of the world is not even pretending to meet their emissions promises. As is obvious in the graph below, governments of the top 20 producers of the evil coal, oil and gas are planning to dig up even more of it by 2030 than they do now. These 20 nations produce 80% of the world’s fossil fuels and somewhere out there are lots of customers.

The report appears to be a scorecard to guilt-trip the 20 naughty nations into giving up warmth, food or billions of dollars in exports, but it reads like the Paris Agreement is pure charade.

Governments plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 than the 1.5°C warming limit allows

Stockholm, 8 November 2023 – A major new report published today finds that governments plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2°C.

Who are we kidding?

The Production Gap really means “The […]

Despite the green revolution, and record energy use, the world still runs on 82% fossil fuels

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

By Jo Nova

We are a fossil fueled world. Solar & wind power make up just 7.5% 6% of our energy needs.*

The world has set a new record for energy use in the last year. And even though renewables are being installed at the fastest rate they ever have been, it isn’t enough to keep up with the growing demand for energy let alone to “convert” the world to Net Zero.

Overall, despite our best efforts to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the world remains “stuck” getting 82% of its energy from them.

The Energy Institute has released the Statistical Review of World Energy, and it shows global energy use has not only recovered from the pandemic, it is now 3% higher than it was pre-Covid in 2019. The relentless human desire for energy continues. In 2022, humans used 1% more energy than they did the year before and 70% of that growth was from China.

To put the historic size of the “Renewable Energy Transition” into focus, here’s the last century of energy transformation. The Energy Institute did not seem to want to highlight the insignificance of renewable energy, so […]

Academics say rich nations owe poor ones $192 Trillion for “atmospheric appropriation”

By Jo Nova

Some overpaid academics think the rich nations owe $192,000,000,000,000 to poorer nations because of the “carbon pollution” they emitted.

Jo Nova says that fossil fuels built a civilization that invented cars, trains, planes, penicillin, the Haber-Bosch process, and clean water — making seven billion more lives possible. Fossil Fueled nations added free fertilizer to the atmosphere, increased crops and forests, greened the world and fed more people than ever.

The uncosted benefits owed to the West far outweigh the imaginary losses, so call off the parasites and let’s consider it all a free gift from the West to the world. What are seven billion lives worth?

The global population was resolutely stuck under 1 billion people for a hundred thousand years, then we discovered fossil fuels. | Source: OWID

It’s just another jumped up claim, not to feed the poor, but to enrich the bureaucrat class:

Rich Nations Owe $192 Trillion for Causing Climate Change, New Analysis Finds

By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on June 6, 2023, Scientific American

High carbon countries owe at least $192 trillion to low-emitting nations in compensation for their greenhouse gas pollution. That’s the conclusion of […]

The paradox: The West burns more fossil fuels per capita but has healthier air

Source: IQAir

By Jo Nova

The trend is clear: Burning more fossil fuels per person means less polluted air

Tell the world: two weeks ago a new study showed Australians and New Zealanders breathe the cleanest air on Earth. Not far behind them are people in the US, Canada, most of western Europe and Japan.

Naturally, hypnotized journalists either ignored the story or repeated the magic spell conclusions that fossil fuels were to blame, along with wildfires “caused by climate change”. All of them momentarily forgetting that Australians burn more fossil fuels per capita than nearly anywhere on Earth and are also renown for wildfires so big they drop ash on New Zealand.

The best air in the world turns out to be in nations that burn a lot of fossil fuels per person. The most polluted air is in poorer nations, poor sods.

Report: Only six countries met ‘healthy’ air quality standards in 2022

March 14 (UPI) — Just six countries had “healthy” air quality levels last year, as air pollution surged across the globe.

Only Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland and New Zealand, met the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines, according […]

Green revolution coming undone on the rocks of reality in Germany

Emden, Germany by Gritte, @gritte

By Jo Nova

Germany is at the leading edge of the climate wars and the Greens are starting to lose both in polling and policy. Despite the claims that the energy crisis will push everyone into renewables, one year later, the dominant energy source for German electricity is coal, up by eight percentage points to 33% of generation.

While the world is supposedly caught in a renewable rush to 2030, the German government just announced it will build 25 gigawatts of gas powered plants by 2030 so they are there when “when [the] wind and sun do not provide enough”. And this week Germany is doing a backflip on their recent EU deal to ban sales of petrol and gas powered cars by 2035. It appears now they will ban the ban, rather than the car, and Germany has the power in the EU to do that. Though it’s not freedom to buy any car you want, but quixotic car loophole.

It’s still a mess of awful, subsidized craziness in a futile quest to control the clouds — but there are signs it is getting less crazy.

Thanks to NetZeroWatch for the links:

[…]

Backflip: BP “disappointed” in renewables — flags a shift back to oil and gas and “making profits”

By Jo Nova The environmental fashion parade suddenly has a smell…

This is a notable shift: Twenty years ago BP called itself “Beyond Petroleum”, and only one year ago the CEO said BP was “accelerating” its green investments. But now the CEO is reassuring investors that BP is not going to be distracted by environmental goals, and are focused on maximizing profits. Furthermore those profits would be found where it has a competitive advantage, including it’s “legacy oil and gas operations”.

Just like that: it’s OK to talk about profits and energy security. Key words here are “dialing back”, “disappointed”, “narrower” and “less emphasis” and they are all used in relation to environmental investments.

After years of sunshine and unicorns on the forced transition to unreliable energy, the mood appears to be changing.

h/t Paul Homewood at Notalotofpeopleknowthat

BP’s CEO Plays Down Renewables Push as Returns Lag

Bernard Looney seeks to sharpen strategic focus, with less emphasis on environmental goals

Jenny Strasberg, Wall Street Journal

Chief Executive Bernard Looney plans to dial back elements of the oil giant’s high-profile push into renewable energy, according to people familiar with recent discussions.

Now climate change makes fossil fuels “unreliable”, the lamest excuse for grid failure, yet

By Jo Nova

Affected by high winds?

Whatever the question, the excuse is always “climate change” and the answer is always Wind and Solar.

Are you an Energy Minister? Did you stop drilling for gas, let teenage girls design your national grid, and rely on a hostile power to supply your fuel? Stupid you, but that’s OK, because if your reliable grid is failing, it’s not your fault, it’s “climate change”. See how this works? It’s not that you vandalized a highly engineered system with frivolous vanity projects but that you didn’t do enough of them.

Heatwaves are apparently wrecking coal plants now. That extra one degree outdoors makes all the difference to a turbine that runs 24 hours a day at 540 degrees C. If only we’d known? Or maybe we did. In 1962 we could build coal plants in Arizona that are still running, and gas plants (in 1959) in Yuma County where the average maximum is 45C (115F) for three months of the year.

Seems the engineers had hot weather sorted out 60 years ago.

The lamest excuse for grid failure yet

Is it gas-lighting, or just stupid?

How the climate crisis is threatening […]

The real transition of the last 700 years was *to* fossil fuels

Make no mistake, the story of our lifetimes is that we got wildly lucky. It’s not just that most our economy is no longer dedicated to finding fuel (for our corporeal bodies or our machines) but that a vast share of our lives is not consumed with collecting wood or dung, rolling up hay, or gathering berries.

The graph below shows a remarkable transformation from a lifestyle where 80% of all the work done was just the daily task of finding fuel. The advent of the industrial revolution cut that effort in half, but the wild success of coal power and technology in the 1800s cut it by factor of ten. It almost appears as if coal did not just fuel the 19th Century, but created the 20th Century too. It was the great disruptor…

The real energy transition in the last 700 years

This was the economic transformation of the United Kingdom

By the 1990s the hunt for all the energy we needed was just a tiny 7% of the economy. And the most remarkable thing about that which is not shown in the graph, was that the total energy consumed had not shrunk at all, it […]

Just like that: European Fertilizer production down 70%

The vainglorious shunning of gas production in Europe in quest for weather salvation will hurt the world’s poor the most. As Europe scrambles to replace the astonishing loss of 70% of their own fertilizer production they will be competing to import fertilizer from stretched markets around the world.

The price rises in gas, fertilizer and next year in food, will hurt the poorest of the poor far more than the theoretical temperature rise ever could. Thank the EU. Thank the Greens.

Click to enlarge: It’s a wipeout

Higher gas prices deepen Europe’s fertiliser crunch, threaten food crisis

Europe’s fertilizer crunch is deepening with more than two-thirds of production capacity halted by soaring gas costs, threatening farmers and consumers far beyond the region’s borders.

As Europe becomes a net importer of fertilizer, the fallout from the supply crunch will spread. The region will start competing for scarce supplies with poorer nations, especially in Africa, where food insecurity is exacerbated by persistent droughts and conflict.

These prices cause third degree burns:

Fertiliser shortage threatens farming, food security in Europe

According to the CRU Group, a business intelligence firm specialising in commodities, fertiliser producers in the EU […]

Ban the Ads? Fossil fuels are “like Tobacco” say clueless bully marketers who use fossil fuels

Shut Up, say Climate Alarmists trying to ban Fossil Fuel Ads

When science is not on your side you have to stop the other half speaking somehow. Obviously, these marketers are not going to win a science debate.

So 300 public relations geniuses who are dependent on fossil fuels want to deny the companies that feed, cloth, warm and move them — the right to even pay to make their case? Well, Over to you I say. When you switch off the grid, we’ll believe you are sincere, rather than status seeking junkies looking to earn fashionista points in a debate you haven’t done five minutes of real research in.

They, the physics dropouts of university, may protest that they have solar panels, and an EV, and timeshares in a windfarm near Ararat, but not one of them has the integrity to do this properly. All of them rely on power from coal plants in the dead of night to keep them warm, to stabilize the fifty hertz, and to be there when the wind don’t blow. Even in the unlikely event one of the 300 has bought the Super-Uber battery bank that charges their car and the fridge […]

Inconvenient: The four pillars of civilization all require fossil fuels, and more of them

Not the kind of article we’d expect to see in Time Magazine. A 100% endorsement of the inescapable need for fossil fuels?

The Modern World Can’t Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels

By Vaclav Smil, Time Magazine

Cyron Ray Macey

Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs. The world now produces annually about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, nearly 400 million tons of plastics, and 180 million tons of ammonia. But it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilizers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people.

Does any other odd factoid capture the rise of China so well?

China now produces more than half of the world’s cement and in recent years it makes in just two years as much of it as did the […]

Two weeks of War undoes thirty years of energy propaganda: Everyone wants fossil fuels

It’s the Great Reset in Global Energy complacency

There is pandemonium on the markets and suddenly many nations want to be energy sufficient. It’s perhaps not The Great Reset than the collective-types were expecting?

The gas flows from Russia to the EU are sporadically tightening, and the Yamal-Europe line has been cut off. Gas in Europe is now trading at €340/MWh which is fully 22 times the long term average. Newcastle coal normally trades around $60 per ton, but now is over $400 USD.

A few days ago the former head of MI6 in the UK called for an immediate lifting of the frakking ban which was set to see concrete poured down the only two shale gas wells in England by March 15th. Thirty-five Tory MPs and four peers sent a letter to Boris demanding the same thing. Now even Boris Johnson is suggesting the Green targets could be relaxed, not just for Britain, but for all the West. He went so far as to suggest The West could give itself a “climate change pass” while we figure out how to get energy that isn’t Russian gas.

Thanks to NetZeroWatch

So much for the end of Fossil […]

Green weakness enables wars. Punish Russia by burning more Coal, Gas, Shale and Nuclear power

While the West went weak-Green, Russia became the 2nd largest gas supplier on Earth

“The Eco-Hair-Shirt of Climate-Changey sufferance comes at a terrible price”

The Renewable-West is toothless to stop Russia doing whatever it damn-well wants.

Energy is power. As the West gave up the power to run its own factories and keep its own people warm, it also gave up the power to influence world affairs. The fashionable Eco-Hair-Shirt of Climate-Changey sufferance comes at a terrible price.

Weakness invites wars

Without its own energy supply, amidst an energy crisis, the West can’t help but buy gas from Russia. The only sanctions we can apply are weak and thus the West pays top dollar for Russian gas, and sends more tank-money to a nation with power because it’s selling a product that everyone wants. Nobody wants a wind farm unless someone else pays a subsidy.

The best thing the West could do now is run their old coal and nuclear plants at top speed, launch the UK Shale industry, and get serious about the North Sea. Then the price of gas would fall, the EU could use sanctions that mattered.

Instead Germany is shutting nuclear plants, Britain […]

It’s expensive to change the global climate, just ask the EU

If there was a sign of a major problem with energy policy it might look just like this:

In the EU for most of the last ten years gas prices were €20. Last week they spiked to €180. Prices have come down in the last few days as a flotilla of 15 US tankers crosses the Atlantic to rescue the EU and some Russian troops departed from the border near Ukraine.

Who needs gas? Everyone apparently… | Source: Trading Economics

It’s heartwarming to see the US tankers on the way:

US Tankers headed for EU

No sign the EU governments get the message:

What will it take? The Netherlands announced that they will limit coal stations and pay them not to produce electricity most of the time in the hope of stopping floods and droughts:

Dutch Government will limit coal-fired power stations to just 35% capacity from January 1.

Dutch coal-fired power stations may not operate at more than 35% of their maximum capacity in the coming years. “In the short term, this will lead to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions at coal-fired power stations of approximately 6-7 megatons,” the Ministry […]

After 26 COP meetings we are a Fossil Fueled World: Coal, oil gas give us 80% of the energy on Earth 

This is what Decarbonization Failure looks like:

Our World In Data

After three decades of effort, twenty-six glorious international COP meetings, six IPCC reports, and the installation of around 400,000 wind turbines, the total energy supplied in the big renewable energy transition still amounts to about 5% of total energy production.

The artificial Global Green energy transition is but a decoration on the energy cake. Twenty five thousand commercial planes aren’t electric. 6,225 bulk carriers are not powered by solar panels. And 260 smelters are molten hot and none of them work on wind turbines.

While the media green junkies tell how inevitable the renewable energy transition is, the wave we ride is the massive increase in the use of coal, oil and gas.

And it’s still growing.

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“Fossil Fuels are a strategic asset” say people watching UK and EU perfect gas storm

It’s not even winter yet but suddenly all eyes are on the gas prices

Gas through the roof…

Thanks to fear of climate change voodoo many nations in the EU have effectively stopped exploring for gas and decided not to frack their shale deposits to get cheap gas too. (In Australia too). Vainglorious governments aimed to change the weather instead of having cheap electricity and lo, wind-towers were built everywhere.

What could possibly go wrong? Nearly everything.

Even the massive size of the European market hasn’t saved them from price rises so large that retail suppliers are collapsing, and fertilizer factories are closing.

Its a great way to give your enemies the upper hand

The wind drought in spring and summer meant that wind farms failed. Then the Russians squeezed gas supply in to the EU looking suspiciously like they were hoping to push up prices and pressure Germany into approving the controversial Nordstream 2 pipeline. Now the Kremlin is suggesting a quick approval will alleviate the gas shortage (they’re just trying to help). In the latest news one large interconnector between the UK and France has suffered a fire and broken down and won’t be restored til […]

Be gone all you gas cookers and heaters in Victoria! We need colder weather. Seriously?

Evil weather-destroying equipment will be banished:

Photo Kwon Junho

Victorians building new homes will be denied the choice to pick their preferred heating and cooking appliances in the hope that this will stop storms and droughts for their great grandchildren.

As household prices rise, the money that could have been used for holidays, health, or education will be used to enrich a few corporations and make a small percentage of the population feel important and calmer.

If only the low carbon revolution was clean, green and cheap, no one would have to ban anything.

Suffer the children:

Push to turn off gas to help reach state’s climate goal

Tom Cowie and Nick O’Malley, The Age

Gas appliances including heaters, hot water services and cooktops would be phased out under a proposed moratorium on new gas connections to Victorian households to help the state achieve its 2030 target to cut carbon emissions by up to 50 per cent.

Victorians are the nation’s biggest users of natural gas for heating, hot water and cooking due to the state’s historically cheap and plentiful supply piped in from Bass Strait since the 1970s.

But […]