Today’s Key Takeaways: U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel, hosts Alaska LNG summit in Japan. Putting a floor under oil with the SPR. U.S. gas exporters eye Europe’s fluctuating market. All the metals we mined in 2021. Alaska’s Independents have something to say to rest of the country?
NEWS OF THE DAY:
JOINT STATEMENT ON ALASKA LNG SUMMIT TODAY IN JAPAN
ANCHORAGE, AK (Oct. 24) – Today Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and Alaska Gasline
Development Corporation Frank Richards released the following statement at the conclusion of
the Alaska LNG Summit of U.S. and Japanese energy and policy leaders convened in Tokyo by
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel. Summit attendees gathered to advance the Alaska
LNG project to commercialize abundant North Slope natural gas for delivery to Alaskans and
export markets, including Japan.
In-person participants included Ambassador Emanuel, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (AK), Mr. Richards,
and U.S. and Japanese government and LNG industry representatives, including from INPEX,
Mitsubishi Corporation, Tokyo Gas, and JERA. Gov. Dunleavy, U.S. Department of State Senior
Advisor for Energy Security Amos Hochstein, and U.S. Department of State Assistant Secretary
for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt participated via video conference.
Governor Dunleavy and Mr. Richards said, “This gathering of top energy and policy leaders from
Japan and the U.S. signifies Alaska LNG’s incredible potential to provide Japan with a
multigenerational supply of reliable clean Alaska energy. Alaska LNG is poised to help fulfill
national energy security and clean climate goals for both nations, and today’s discussion is an
important step forward in the ongoing dialogue to develop a strong privately led partnership to
successfully develop and operate Alaska LNG.”
OIL:
Biden Just Put A Floor Under Oil. Will It Work?
Irina Slav, OilPrice.Com, October 23, 2022
- The Biden Administration has tried to keep oil prices in check by releasing crude from the SPR this year.
- The main concern among those watching SPR levels has been its replenishment.
- This week, the Biden Administration announced that it would start replenishing the SPR once prices fall to the $67-72 range, effectively putting a price floor under crude.
The Biden administration is ready to sell additional volumes of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve after the end of the 180-million-barrel release plan and then it would begin replenishing the SPR once prices fall to $67-$72 per barrel. This is the main outtake from a fact sheet published by the White House this week as the administration continues to look for ways to tame retail fuel prices with just weeks left until the midterm elections.
The SPR draws—and plans for more—have caused concern among some analysts, who have pointed out that the purpose of the SPR is not to keep gasoline prices under control but to ensure the country’s oil supply in an emergency.
Others have questioned the very relevance of the SPR in today’s oil world, where the United States is the biggest oil producer on the planet, but market reactions to this year’s SPR releases have suggested that keeping a strategic reserve is still quite a good idea.
The main concern among those watching SPR levels has been its replenishment. Because of the massive draws that the Biden administration implemented as a tool for keeping a lid on gasoline prices, inventories at the SPR are now at the lowest in almost 40 years, at some 405 million barrels.
GAS:
U.S. Gas Exporters Looking At Fluctuating European MarketBojan Lepic, Rigzone, October 24, 2022
With the US becoming increasingly integrated into global gas markets as one of the world’s largest exporters, it is setting its sights on customers in the fluctuant European market.
Currently, US LNG exports are running at a little over 11 billion cubic feet per day, which is about 11% of the country’s marketed natural gas production.
According to Wood Mackenzie, North American prices are starting to be influenced by global trends in LNG markets and the US producers are starting to sell at international prices. EOG Resources, for example, signed a deal in 2019 for gas to be exported from Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi plant.
MINING:
All the Metals We Mined in 2021
Visual Capitalist, October 20, 2022
POLITICS:
Alaska’s Independents Have Something to Say to the Rest of the Country
David Siders, Politico, October 21, 2022
Liberated by ranked choice voting, they seem poised to swing dramatically toward Democrats. Will independent voters in the Lower 48 follow?
In a restaurant ballroom just up the road from Sarah Palin’s home on Lake Lucille, a room full of Republicans one recent Saturday night hung golden balloons from a paneled ceiling, lined up at the bar and held a drawing for a “wall of guns.”
The event was a fundraiser for a local Republican women’s group, and one of the speakers, Ann Brown, the state Republican Party chair, had a very specific ask.
Vote for Republicans in November’s ranked choice election, she said, “and no Democrats or any other party.”
The crowd applauded. But standing in the back of the room, by a table of auction items — a red, white, and blue Kate Spade bag, a Trump 2024 hat, a mug that said Trump “won” — it struck me that given the composition of the audience, this was a strange thing for a Republican Party chair to have to say. In this heavily conservative state, reminding Republicans to vote Republican would seem to signal a big problem in the GOP.
Republicans were rattled earlier this year when Palin, a one-time political sensation and one of the GOP’s original populists, lost a special election for a vacant congressional seat to a Democrat, Mary Peltola. They pointed fingers at Alaska’s new ranked choice voting system, in which a voter’s second choice — if their preferred candidate fell short — could help decide the outcome. The system is meant to weed out extreme candidates, and true to form only about half of voters who supported Nick Begich III, a more traditionalist Republican and the candidate endorsed by the state party, had marked Palin as their second choice.