Here’s your feel-good story of the day: The cartel lost $76B last year due to U.S. fracking.
I’m old enough to remember when Barack Obama told us we couldn’t drill our way out of the energy crisis. Oil reserves continue to climbe every year, as they have for decades.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sort of related: Three reasons natural gas prices may be headed higher.
We just put in a soaking tub in our renovated bath, and now our 40-gallon water heater isn’t quite up to the job. I’d been thinking about putting in an instant heater in the bath, but there’s no gas line to it, and at California prices, the electric bill would be a killer. I could replace it with an instant-gas heater, but I’m starting to think maybe just get a bigger tank, given that it’s almost thirty years old.
[Update a while later]
OPEC is dead.
It’s been a feature of my life for forty-five years. It’s not quite as big a victory as ending the Cold War, but good riddance.
FWIW all the plumbers and some users of instant (on demand) water heaters say not to do it. I was interested for a while but they dissuaded me.
Natural gas prices heading up a bit would be good news for solar and wind in the US, as natural gas is their main competitor,
Intermittency remains a barrier to ultimate complete dominance, of course, but Musk is doing something about that. Turns out that just like rockets, you can make batteries a lot cheaper if you throw engineers at the problem of making their factories more effective.