American utilities have used the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war to price gouge the consumer.
Natural gas prices have nosedived 73% since 3Q2022 but utility prices stopped declining a year ago and are down just 14% from peak.
Utility gas actually increased in 4Q2023 and again in 1Q2024.
Look at all that air under the red line. First time that's happened in decades.
People should be MAKING A STINK!
The roll call vote is here.
Just a hypothetical here: $60.8 billion / $1.3 billion per night of Russian air assaults (compare Iran attack on Israel) = 46 nights.
Nothing has changed.
Put that in your human progress pipe and smoke it.
Zelensky rages at West for 'turning blind eye' on war as Russia advances...
Referring to French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to rule out sending western troops to Ukraine this week, Putin said Russia remembered “the fate of those who once sent their contingents to our country. “Now the consequences for possible interveners will be much more tragic,” he added. “We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory.”
CNBC similarly here:
The comments appeared to be a direct response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion earlier this week that European heads of state and Western officials, who had met in Paris on Monday, had talked about the possibility of sending ground troops into Ukraine.
The French leader on Monday said there was no consensus on the idea, but that it had not been “ruled out.”
The comments have since sent NATO countries scrambling to deny they’d send troops into Ukraine, with Russia warning that such a deployment would prompt an “inevitable” Russia-NATO conflict.
Chris Christie is a smart guy with many of the right ideas about government spending, taxes, inflation, energy, and the environment.
But it's a real stretch to think that the timid interest rate increases of the Fed are responsible for this year's so-far moderating inflation indicators when it's falling energy prices since the winter which deserve the real credit. Christie himself admits that outrageous government spending hasn't been curbed at all.
His is a simple binary view which, while conventional and correct as far as it goes, doesn't get to the heart of the current matter.
Low energy prices have always been and remain key to a successful economy, and it was the spike in natural gas cost inputs because of the Russia-Ukraine war which accelerated inflation globally, not just in the US.
Fed chair Jerome Powell was correct in June of 2021 to believe that inflation would be transitory for "weak supply" reasons, but the Fed rate increases didn't actually commence until the start of the war in Ukraine, which compounded those reasons with the cutoff of European natural gas supplies.
But since the winter the natural gas price is down 73% from peak, coal is down 70%, and gasoline is down too, but a comparatively modest 24%.
Americans consumed in 2022 the energy equivalent of 26.9 billion kWh/day of natural gas, 13 billion kWh/day of gasoline, and 7.9 billion kWh/day of coal.
Natural gas is twice as important as gasoline in the overall American energy picture, primarily for heating, and as a substitute for coal in electricity generation.
Natural gas produced 4.6 billion kWh/day of electricity in 2022, the top source of electricity, vs. coal at 2.3 billion kWh/day and nuclear at 2.1 billion kWh/day.
Chris Christie is right though. We must "uncap" US oil and gas production and be energy independent.
Europe's natural gas storage, by the way, is presently 93% full as the war in Ukraine drags on. They are ready.
The US used 88.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2022. We presently have about 35 days in storage.
Crude oil consumption in 2022 was about 20.3 million barrels per day. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is down to about 17 days of supply, from about 35 in 2011.
Watch CNBC’s full interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Chris Christie
Christie lets Fed off the hook for inflation, blames Trump and Biden for overspending
The monthly payment will now resemble the high end of normal I experienced in the years prior to the Russia-Ukraine War.
Like a boot off my neck.
Recent upticks in deaths in both Sweden but especially Finland must have something to do with an influx of refugees from the Russia-Ukraine War.
Bloomberg, here:
Germany now generates more than a third of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, according to Destatis, the federal statistical office. In the third quarter, its electricity from the fuel was 13.3% higher than the same period a year earlier, the agency said.
Germany as recently as 2019 still had 40 gigawatts of electricity capacity from coal, and planned to reduce that to 27 by 2022, so obviously Germany has much more capacity available than 10 gigawatts during its present natural gas supply crisis caused by the Ukraine war.
But Germany's more serious mistake than reducing its coal capacity was its voluntary and hysterical reduction of nuclear generation capacity by 40% in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Now it's got just 3 reactors left out of the 17 it had back in the day.
Meanwhile US electric capacity from coal in 2021 dwarfed the German, at about 210 gigawatts, but that is way down from almost 318 in 2011, a similarly ideologically driven, self-imposed, and illogical reduction of 108 gigawatts, or 33% in ten years.
The foolish growing reliance on unreliable "green energy" in the US and the turn away from coal which began in earnest under Obama has meant increasing unreliability of electric resources during extreme events, and a huge increase in the duration of power outages experienced by customers.
The average customer outage was just north of 8 hours in 2020 vs. about 3.5 hours in 2013, an increase of over 130%.
This will only get worse if America tries to rely on wind and solar at the expense of fossil fuels and nuclear.
There's never any discussion about how core inflation vaulted to the current levels well before the war in Ukraine even began.
The reason for the inflation surge is Biden's war for green energy, the one input which makes everything cost more because green energy costs much more than conventional energy from coal, oil, and natural gas.
Add trillion$ in COVID stimulus chasing too few goods and it's a recipe for the disaster which is ongoing, not moderating.
Some people get it. Most don't.
Basically a combination of demand for domestic electric power production, demand for LNG exports to Europe because of the Ukraine war, low inventories headed into the winter, and fear.
Prices have quadrupled.
And Biden is considering ending all offshore drilling.
We are so screwed by these Democrat clowns.
From her irresponsible column, here:
Mr. Putin talks about nuclear weapons a lot. He did it again Wednesday: In a meeting with politicians in St. Petersburg, he said if anyone intervenes in Ukraine and “creates unacceptable threats for us that are strategic in nature,” the Russian response will be “lightning fast.” He said: “We have all the tools for this that no one else can boast of having. We won’t boast about it, we’ll use them, if needed.”
He’s talked like this since the invasion. It’s a tactic: He’s trying to scare everybody. That doesn’t mean the threat is empty.
There are signs the Russians are deliberately creating a historical paper trail, as if to say they warned us. On Monday Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the risk of nuclear conflict is “serious” and “should not be underestimated.”
No he doesn't. No he hasn't. And neither has Lavrov. Listen for yourself. It's Peggy who is supplying "the risk of nuclear conflict", not Lavrov. Lavrov is clearly referring to the dangerous increased rhetoric about the possibility of nuclear conflict, which is precisely the hysteria Peggy Noonan is engaging in. The Russians have been very circumspect. They don't actually use the terminology. They're not bluffing. They're beating around the bush to create uncertainty, to keep their enemies off balance.
Putin has never used the phrase "nuclear weapon" in any of these examples which have been reported in the press since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Putin's hypersonic capability is clearly in focus in his statements. He has them and the West does not. He's threatening to use them with conventional warheads against Western targets, which is bad enough. But nuclear warheads? That's what he wants us to think, to create fear. But he's never actually said it.
The nuclear talk is all Western hype, exaggeration, and lying. And Drudge is a major aggregator of such headlines. It's irresponsible and it must stop, because to continue it is to make the unthinkable, thinkable, and then actual.
Try exercising your free speech absolutism then, as your tongue vaporizes inside your mouth.
Meanwhile Peggy Noonan appears not to have considered that Putin has daughters, to whom he might really want to leave something other than smoking embers.
Hysteria has a way of blinding one to important facts.
NOONAN: Putin Really May Break the Nuclear Taboo in Ukraine!
Moscow warns 'do not underestimate threat of nuclear war'... ^
Putin test-fires 'Satan' nuclear missile... ^
Cronies 'flee to bunkers' in sign might turn nuclear... ^
UN Warns: Nuclear War 'Within Realm of Possibility'... ^
Putin actions trigger long-buried fears of nuclear war for generations of Americans... ^
Accused of Nuclear 'Terrorism'... ^
Putin nuclear threat part of new escalation policy... ^
Even Putin's generals look stunned after being ordered to put nuclear forces on 'alert'... Decree that shocked the world... ^
PUTIN WARNS HE'LL NUKE WEST ^
Nuke-capable missiles loaded onto subs... ^
NUKE BOMBER BUZZES UKRAINE... ^
POPE NUKE WARNING ^
ZELENSKY NUKE WARNING TO WORLD... ^
CIA Director: Nuke threat not taken 'lightly'... ^
Nuke Fears Stoked With Atomic Weapons Warnings... ^
Senators mull unthinkable: Vlad detonating nuke... ^
FEAR: More Putin Nuke Threats... ^
Likely More Nuke Threats... ^
PUTIN NUKE FEARS GROW ^
NUKE CONCERNS RISING ^
Nuke threat part of new escalation policy... ^
NUKE CRAZY! ^
ORDERS NUKE FORCES ON HIGH ALERT ^
ORDERS NUKE FORCES ON HIGH ALERT ^