Why Renewables Cannot Compete in the Real World; Because the Oil and Gas Industry Is An Innovation Machine

Oil and gas, from the very beginning, has been the Secretariat of American industry. If you don’t know what I mean, watch this outstanding little video of the famous horse leaving his competition in the Belmont dust as he claimed the Triple Crown:

The announcer, at about 1:40, appropriately and excitedly describes Secretariat as a “tremendous machine.” That can be said of the oil and gas industry as well, as a little story in Today In Energy the other day shows us in this chart pertaining to the Permian:

Ignore the Wu-Flu dip and imagine straight trend lines that run from beginning to end in each half of the chart. What will become readily apparent is that the rig count is inversely proportional to well productivity. The latter gains are, in fact, astounding. All the talk about renewables becoming ever cheaper are betrayed by the fact the developers, after four decades of subsidies, still have their hand out and can’t make it without them. THey never will as solar and wind are old technology and they cannot compete in a free market with oil and gas.

Read the full story for more details, but, really what more do you need to know?

#Solar #Wind #Oil #NaturalGas #Permian #Productivity #Subsidies #EIS