HOUSTON — Falling gasoline prices have sent oil company stocks tumbling, but oil experts say the boom in American energy production shows no signs of slowing down, keeping the market flush with crude and gasoline prices low.

Even after a drop of as much as 25 percent in oil prices since early summer, several government and private reports say that it would take a drop of $10 to $20 a barrel more — to as low as $60 a barrel — to slow production even modestly. …

The Energy Department this week reported that only 4 percent of shale production in North Dakota, Texas and other states needed an oil price above $80 a barrel for producers to break even on investments. One reason is that improved efficiencies in hydraulic fracturing and other modern production techniques have increased the output of each new well month after month in recent years.

Did you note the matter-of-fact, hysteria-free way the NYT refers to fracking? Quite pleasant compared with California’s newspapers, where all enviro reporters with one exception never even mention that the Obama administration considers it safe. Or that the environmental movement basically didn’t say squat about hydraulic fracturing — using underground water cannons to blast away rock and access oil and natural gas reserves — for the first 60 years it was used.

Only when fracking became far more efficient (and cleaner) in the past six or seven years has it emerged as something greens love to hate — and even then the greenest president in history won’t buy in.

Fracking: Sit back and enjoy the CA freakout

So as the U.S. oil boom continues, California residents who like good news and who don’t like the quasi-religious extremism of many environmentalists will have to listen to evidence-free wailing from people who benefit enormously from fracking. They’ll shout themselves hoarse about its evils and pursue local bans, as seen in various communities around the state.

This would normally annoy me because I think fracking is being slandered and that it would be great for California. But I’m now doubtful it will ever come to pass in a major way in a place where the green religion is so strong. Anyone who started a petition drive for an anti-fracking California ballot initiative would have millions of dollars quickly pouring in from the usual billionaire lefties. I’m surprised some lefty consultant doesn’t start up such a drive without even having a client first; it wouldn’t take long to find a deep-pockets patron.

So instead, I will choose to enjoy the discomfiture of CA greens as fracking continues to be one of the world’s great economic phenomena, despite their stern and pious disapproval. Outside of California, billionaire lefties don’t stand a chance against public opinion (very, very, very pro-cheap energy) and Big Oil. Schadenfreude is going to be fun.

But I will also enjoy the CA green freakout because the longer that fracking goes on without anything close to a Love Canal-level enviro disaster, the tougher it will be for the public to take seriously the sky-is-falling rhetoric from fracking haters.

The traditional, much dirtier, much less efficient version of hydraulic fracturing that was used from the 1940s until 2006 or so didn’t lead to a Love Canal. If one happened now, it would in goofy ways be akin to a religious miracle.

But not when it comes to efforts to roll back the newly enacted ban on single-use plastic bags:

The Attorney General of California has prepared the following title and summary of the chief purpose and points of the proposed measure:

REFERENDUM TO OVERTURN BAN ON SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAGS. If signed by the required number of registered voters and timely filed with the Secretary of State, this petition will place on the statewide ballot a challenge to a state law previously approved by the Legislature and the Governor. The challenged law must then be approved by a majority of voters at the next statewide election to go into effect. The law prohibits grocery and certain other retail stores from providing single-use bags but permits sale of recycled paper bags and reusable bags.

That looks pretty neutral to me. Good for Kamala Harris.

Sac Bee spreads the green religion

Meanwhile, the propagandists are at it again, pretending that the case is overwhelming for the ban, instead of extremely mixed. This is from a sneering Sac Bee editorial:

It’s a true if gruesome fact that chickens that have been relieved of their heads sometimes run around for a while before they quite realize their irreversible predicament.

That appears to be happening to the plastic bag industry. It would explain why it hasn’t figured out that the ubiquitous single-use plastic grocery bag has just suffered a killing blow. Its days are numbered.

The very day the governor signed a statewide ban on single-use grocery bags, Sept. 30, the industry filed papers to start the process for a referendum. If it qualifies by gathering enough signatures, it will delay the July 2015 implementation of the ban until it can be decided by voters during the November 2016 election.

Then, the industry will spend many millions of dollars to try to trick Californians into thinking that it’s a good thing that billions of single-use plastic bags are clogging up our storm drains and rivers, tangling up in our native flora, filling up the oceans and doing God only knows what other environmental mischief.

The truth is not what Californians have been told

I defer to Jay Beeber’s assault on this green propaganda. This is from Reason’s website in 2012, when a bag ban was being considered in Los Angeles:

Proponents give three reasons for the bag ban. They claim it will reduce the amount of waste entering landfills, reduce litter on streets, and “help protect the environment.”

But banning free grocery bags will not achieve those lofty goals.

First, banning free plastic grocery bags won’t reduce waste. California’s Statewide Waste Characterization Study [pdf] shows that “Plastic Grocery and Other Merchandise Bags” consistently make up just 0.3 percent of the waste stream in the state. That’s three-tenths of 1 percent. In comparison, organic waste such as food and yard clippings makes up 32 percent while construction debris comprises about 30 percent. The effect of eliminating free grocery bags on the amount of waste generated in the city would be insignificant.

Second, despite misleading claims from environmental groups and the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation, banning free plastic grocery bags won’t do much to reduce litter in the public commons. Litter studies from across the country demonstrate that, on average, plastic retail bags make up about 1 percent to 2 percent of all litter.

Even that small amount of litter doesn’t decline when bans are enacted. In San Francisco, plastic bags comprised 0.6 percent of litter before the city banned plastic bags and 0.64 percent a year after the ban took effect [pdf, pg. 35]. Since plastic grocery bags make up less than 2 percent of roadside trash, banning them will affect neither the total amount of litter nor the cost of cleaning it up.

Third, banning free plastic grocery bags won’t reduce our consumption of foreign (or domestic) oil. L.A.’s Bureau of Sanitation claims [pdf] that “approximately 12 million barrels of oil go into the US supply of plastic bags.” But plastic bags made in the U.S. are not derived from oil; they’re made from a byproduct of domestic natural gas refinement. Manufacturing plastic grocery bags does not increase our need to import oil, and banning them in Los Angeles or anywhere else will not reduce US oil consumption.

Despite claims that plastics threaten our oceans and sea life, there is no evidence that free plastic grocery bags make up any significant portion of the plastic waste found on beaches or in the ocean. In fact, reports from environmental groups doing beach and ocean clean-ups show that plastic bags make up only about 2 percent of the debris.

The Bee acknowledges none of this. When you have a deep commitment to your faith, you don’t sweat the details. And, in the Bee’s case, you mock and taunt the heretics.

The project has finally begun construction but only after a 13-year campaign by rich liberals to block the alternative energy plant because wind turbines would mess with their wonderful view. In between their fund-raising for Elizabeth Warren and their angry letters to the editor denouncing the Koch brothers, these rich liberals are still trying to tie up the wind plant in court.

Here’s a bit of a 2003 article on the fight:

“State Sen. Rob O’Leary represents the Cape Cod region. … O’Leary says he support wind power in principle, just not at that location.

“‘The problem is that they’re going to be visible. And they’re going to be visible at night and they’re going to be visible during the day and they’re going to be lit up,’ says O’Leary.”

Only invisible power plants are acceptable in coastal Massachusetts, you see.

Save the planet? Forget that. Save the view!

Now we have the California version. State Democrats have been telling us for a generation of the urgent need to save the planet by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But Los Angeles politician Felipe Fuentes — like Rob O’Leary a Sierra Club-loving Dem — has decided that the problem with solar panels is that they’re, yunno, visible.

“Worried solar farms could overtake prized patches of open space, a Los Angeles councilman is asking the Department of Water and Power board to put off allowing new arrays that are mounted on the ground — part of its Feed-In Tariff program — until the city can make sure they mesh with neighborhoods.”

That’s from the L.A. Times. But there’s a problem for Fuentes. The sort of laws he helped get adopted while in the state Legislature don’t allow the city to interfere with people saving the planet:

“City officials say under California’s Solar Rights Act, local jurisdictions are supposed to allow private solar installations unless they harm public health or safety.”

Invasive mandates fine — for other neighborhoods

Now of course Cape Codders and Angelenos have every right to be NIMBYs. But Massachusetts and L.A. are very much hubs of the green religionists who depict those with objections large and small to their agenda as people who don’t care about Mother Earth.

Their green fervor turns out to be fleeting when they’re asked to suffer.

Who knew? Visual blight is an even bigger problem than saving the planet from evil fossil fuels.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see the San Francisco Chronicle matter-of-factly report that the president’s team also shuns the green loons when it comes to the safety of genetically modified foods.

“The Obama administration on Friday said it expects to approve corn and soybeans that are genetically engineered to tolerate a 1940s-era herbicide 2,4-D, used mainly on lawns and golf courses to kill broadleaf weeds.

“That’s because Monsanto’s trademark RoundUp and other glyphosate herbicides no longer work on the super-weeds that are sprouting on the 170 million acres of genetically engineered crops (also known as GMOs, or genetically modified organisms) now planted in the Southeast and Midwest.”

The “war on science” from the left

So this is like advanced GMO work to make up for problems involving previous GMOs — and the president says let’s get it done. Anti-GMO types hoped this minor headache would be offered a a definitive example of how evil GMOs are.

For that disinformation we’ll just have to rely on the lefty enviro reporters at The Atlantic. They’re still in alarmism mode.

I think Republicans have earned the headaches they face over the spurious label of being engaged in a “war on science” because of their tired insistence on touting creationism in many states.

But on environmentalism, it is the Democrats who are relentlessly engaged in a war on science. From GMOs to fracking to secondhand smoke and a whole lot more, they fold, spindle and mutilate the hard evidence to advance their secular religion in all its heavy-handed and nanny state iterations.

But on GMOs and by and large on fracking, they’re losing — just like the creationists.

Good.

Editor’s note: Soon after this was posted Sunday morning, Jerry Brown took our advice — and even used the term “negligible” to describe the effects on the environment. Coincidence? Probably. But still!

Oct. 7, 2012

By Chris Reed

The shocking run-up in gasoline prices endured by California drivers in recent days has led to calls from the California Independent Oil Marketers Association and state Sen. Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista, that Gov. Jerry Brown allow earlier introduction of winter-blend gasoline to increase supply and bring down the cost of gas.

Because this would require both action by the state, which has had uniquely stringent rules on gasoline composition since 1996, and the federal government, don’t expect relief at the pump anytime soon. The high gasoline prices could last until winter-blend gasoline is allowed after Oct. 31.

But the painful price spike at least has one benefit: illustrating the costliness and vapidity of excessive regulation.

There are sensible reasons for adjusting the composition of gasoline depending on the season. During the summer, especially in hotter areas, the formula used minimizes smog and the creation of ozone, which can damage the lungs.

But we are in the third week of fall, and the summer heat has receded. Why couldn’t Gov. Brown and the federal EPA relax the rules to save us all from $5 gas? At the least, why couldn’t winter-blend gasoline be allowed in colder parts of California, which would still have the effect of introducing new supply and reducing the cost of gasoline for everyone in the state?

I put these questions to some experts with this email: