Good morning; here's what the Oilman has for you today:

• Energy Secretary Complains of High Oil Prices

• Canada Moves To End Oil Subsidies

• Upcoming Oil and Gas events

• Tweet of the Day

Energy Secretary Complains of High Oil Prices

Oil prices are too high, and they need to come down with more supply.

That’s the latest insight into how energy markets work from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

Of course, federal policies have zero to do with oil prices.

 Dangerous prices

“We want prices to come down. The president is really focused on the impacts on real people who need to get to work and cannot afford that premium,” Granholm said last weekend.

“We want to see more supply … It gets dangerous when the prices are so high,” the Energy Sec also said.

She then went on to make the observation that transport should be affordable to Americans.

That’s certainly accurate. Only she didn’t say exactly what the Biden admin was going to do to ensure that.

Except ask OPEC to pump more, yet again.

Or do the same with the U.S. oil industry, yet again.

Or, here’s an outlandish idea, stop sabotaging the industry.

You never know; it might just work.

The heavy cross of the Biden administration

Secretary Granholm had her work cut out for her when she took office.

On the one hand, the Biden admin is all in on the energy transition and then some.

On the other, it is important “to ensure that transportation is affordable for people.”

Because “people” means “voters.”

But the two goals of advancing the transition and ensuring cheap fuels are mutually exclusive.

And there’s no way around that.

It’s an either-or situation.

Trying to outsource the problem to OPEC, so to speak, is not helping at all.

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Canada Moves To End Oil Subsidies

Canada’s federal government is making good on its promise to put an end to state support for the oil industry.

To that end, Ottawa just published a framework for the phaseout of subsidies.

But guess what: it won’t actually phase them out.

Not all subsidies are born equal

Progressive governments have been quite active in recent months in stepping up their rhetoric against what they like to call “inefficient” subsidies for oil and gas production.

Apparently, these are inefficient because they don’t advance the energy transition.

The “efficient ones” are the subsidies poured into wind, solar, and EVs.

So, many of the G20 have been busy trying to figure out ways to remove the “inefficient subsidies” in favor of the “efficient ones.”

Canada can now boast it was the first one to actually make a move in that direction.

Except it won’t end subsidies for oil and gas companies completely.

It would only end them for companies that are not working to cut their emissions and invest in things like carbon capture.

What a shocker.

It’s business as usual in the oil patch. Almost.

The industry was happy with the caveats about carbon capture and emission cuts.

It wasn’t happy, though, that the new framework might create confusion and delay investments.

The reason for the confusion: the lack of details about how exactly the new subsidy regime would work.

So, what else is new in the notoriously red-tape-heavy Canadian oil industry?

The new part is the concern that this lack of details and clarity may not just delay investments in oil and gas.

It might – the horror – also delay investments in decarbonization.

We can’t have that now, can we?

Upcoming Oil & Gas Events

• July 28: SOOGA Annual Industry Boat Ride, Valley Gem, Marietta, OH

• July 31-Aug 2: 2023 Railroad Commission of Texas

• August 3-4: OOGA Summer Meeting, Belmont Hills Country Club, St Clairsville, OH

Around the Global Patch

🇳🇴 Setback in Norway's biggest hydrocarbon prospect.
🇦🇺 Australian operator abandons Timor-leste oilfield redevelopment.
🇷🇺 Russian tax changes favor oil sands.

Tweet of the Day

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