Remember when Europe deferred to this teenager to set its energy policy? Good times, good times. . .
Climate strike week 205. #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/RDmF4WnJnp
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) July 22, 2022
Meanwhile, Germany — for some reason — is not firing up its clean-burning nuclear power plants and is instead going with coal:
Germany Firing Up 21 Coal Plants As Putin Tightens The Natural Gas Noose https://t.co/zS8EmHEVb6
— Climate Dispatch (@ccdeditor) August 2, 2022
Hardest hit:
Anyway, that’s not the worst of it. It looks like it’s too late for Germany and Europe to avoid very, very high utility bills this winter:
European natural gas prices advance as traders seek clarity on supplies from Russia and the pace of demand destruction in the region https://t.co/S0lIvt52il
— Bloomberg Energy (@BloombergNRG) August 2, 2022
This sounds . . . bad:
Households across Britain have been warned they could face an annual energy bill in excess of £3,600 this winter https://t.co/gWrbHxTn1k
— Bloomberg Energy (@BloombergNRG) August 2, 2022
Yet it’s an energy crisis we’re barely talking about in America:
European 1-year forward baseload electricity contracts close the day with fresh settlement record highs:
🇩🇪Germany: €384 per MWh
🇫🇷France: €508 per MWh#EnergyCrisis #EnergyTwitter— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 1, 2022
None of this is good:
BREAKING: Germany 1-year forward baseload electricity surges >€400 per MWh for the first time ever.
We are truly into crunching territory for the country's energy-intensive manufacturing industry.
The current price is ~1,000% higher than the €41.1 per MWh 2010-2020 average.
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 2, 2022
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Retail customers are just now feeling the pain:
German retail consumers to start feeling the pain that has been evident in wholesale markets for a long time:
Take for example RheinEnergie, the utility that serves Cologne, raising gas prices by ~130% from Oct 1 (from 7.87 cents to 18.30 cents per KWh) https://t.co/eDbHuQHO1D
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 2, 2022
Oh, and our *allies* continue to support the Russian war machine. Freezing temps will do that to you:
European imports of Russian diesel jump, highlighting challenge to EU plans for ban https://t.co/Rd0uEWGq7z
— FT Energy (@ftenergy) August 2, 2022
One other concern is that the oil left in the U.S. SPR is just not that useful:
For background, read this @opinion column from June on the SPR and the sour/sweet crude split: not all of the crude set aside is equal, and what’s left is, increasingly, far less useful than what’s already gone | #OOTT https://t.co/KXtdfl5oDv
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 1, 2022
Bonus stat: We’re now selling oil leftover from the 70s that we bought from Iran:
And a bit of trivia: some of the sour crude the US is releasing from the SPR comes from (wait for it) Iran — a left over of the late 1970s when the reserve was built.
For example, ~20% of the sour oil inside the Bayou Choctaw (one of the SPR sites tapped) is Iranian Light pic.twitter.com/BO8l4OW7pg
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) August 1, 2022
And what does all this mean? More recession for us at home, that’s what:
The US economy may need to undergo a deeper and longer recession than investors currently anticipate before inflation can be brought under control, according to Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse https://t.co/l3TLGL9Okf
— Bloomberg Energy (@BloombergNRG) August 2, 2022
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