.The Texas Energy Report

17 Years Bringing You News from the Energy Capital of the Planet
 
.The Texas Energy Report

Occidental Posts Nearly $1 Billion 2019 Loss, Goes “Skinny-Dipping in a Tsunami:” Denning

Occidental Petroleum said on Friday it lost $965 million (1.22 a share) after amassing $1.3 billion in costs from $38 billion Anadarko acquistion

 

February 28, 2020

Warren Buffett is credited with that old saying about receding tides and embarrassed skinny-dippers. In Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s case, the lack of swimwear is one problem, but so is the anchor tied around its ankle. Part of that anchor is the old sage himself.

Oxy, as it is known, just reported results for its first full quarter since acquiring Anadarko Petroleum Corp. In that bruising takeover battle against Chevron Corp., Berkshire Hathaway Inc. provided a crucial $10 billion check allowing Oxy to avoid a shareholder vote. It came at a steep cost of, among other goodies, an 8% preferred dividend. As it turns out, that was more than enough to swallow Oxy’s adjusted net income for the second half of 2019 before any of it could trickle down to the commoners.

Buffett didn’t get rich by giving stuff away, so the fact Oxy went to him in the first place signaled just how far it was stretching. Back then, things looked dicey already on the trade-war front. But in early 2020, Oxy finds that not only has the tide gone out, it has gone way out, similar to what happens just before a tsunami floods back in. The tsunami is the coronavirus crisis, swamping an already fragile oil and gas market.

….
 

Oil company executives challenge candidates’ energy policy

Oil company executives challenge candidates’ energy policy

 

By Alex Mills

February 27, 2020

Tuesday is Super Tuesday. It is the day when voters in 14 states, including Texas, will go to the ballot box and elect their party’s nominations for public office.

The Democrat Party in each state will select delegates in support of their candidate for President to challenge President Donald Trump in November. With 1,617 delegates at stake on Tuesday, it is the largest allocation during the primary season.

The leading candidates for the Democratic nomination – Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden – have been very critical of the oil and gas industry. Their comments include limiting drilling, banning hydraulic fracturing, and even criminal prosecution of oil company executives for release of greenhouse gases.

Their comments have caught the attention of the oil industry, and 54 oil and gas company executives cosigned an open letter that appeared as an advertisement in The New York Times on Feb. 24…..
 

Pacific Northwest To Pioneer Excess Regional Clean Energy Sale to California

By Ralph Cavanaugh

 

February 26, 2020

Can a utility in one region buy some of the pollution-free electricity that a utility in another region saves when its customers improve their energy efficiency? We’re about to find out. And if this effort succeeds, it will be a groundbreaking clean energy transaction between the Pacific Northwest and California, benefitting all involved.

There is now a proposal to send to California electricity produced in the Pacific Northwest but not needed there because its customers exceeded energy savings targets established by regional planners to ensure adequate Northwest power supplies. This would be the nation’s first interregional transfer of carbon-free electricity made available as a result of savings from energy efficiency measures such as building and appliance upgrades. Electricity flows across transmission lines between states and regions all the time, but this will be the first long-term sale derived exclusively from verified energy efficiency gains…..
 

In Depth: Preparing for Super Tuesday, a Look at Texas Campaign Fundraising From An Energy Point of View

Texas joins 10 other states for primary elections next Tuesday, March 3rd and the out-of-state money is flowing into the Lone Star State, but energy companies and their owners are already politically active, even as Democrats now see the state as a battleground — but can any political spectacle match that of the new cooperative effort between Charles Koch and George Soros?

 

February 25, 2020

From new money flowing into Texas for congressional races, newfound state status as a “battleground” to a new alliance between two boogeymen of the left and right, the pattern for which political money is flowing continues to change.

In past decades Texas has been considered “an ATM,” where out-of-state candidates come to raise money to run for national office, but now there is new interest by out of state donors and the Democratic National Committee, a belief that the state is beginning to move toward the political left, and now money is flowing from out of state into local races at an increasing pace.

The Dallas Morning News has already declared Texas a battleground state, which, because of demographics and outside money influence, could have a major effect on national politics favoring Democrats…..
 

Update 3: 4Q Texas Energy Earnings Roundup

Update — Adds new results from Sempra (Energy Future Holdings, Oncor), Exterran, Range Resources and Southwestern, in addition to Apache, Calpine, Cenovus, Denbury Resources, El Paso Electric, Enlink, Oasis, Williams Companies, Cheniere, Tellurian, AEP, Cabot, Energy Transfer, Devon, Pioneer Natural Resources, Diamondback, Rattler, Concho, Flowserve, USA Compression, Petrobras, Oil States International, Hoilly Energy Partners, Magnolia, Targa Resources, ONEOK

 

March 2, 2020

Here are the latest 4th quarter earnings snapshots:…..
 

Bloomberg’s Money Funds Anti-Fossil Fuel Agenda

By Alex Mills

 

February 20, 2020

It is well known that presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, one of richest men in the world, has used his money in a massive advertising campaign to tout his candidacy for the Democrat Party’s nomination. His money was a focal point of the latest Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday.

However, it is not well known that he also uses his money to support his political positions, such as gun control, abortion and anti-fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal).

Bloomberg, the 78-year-old former mayor of New York City, privately funds anti-fossil fuel programs at the Sierra Club (he donated $50 million for its Beyond Coal and Beyond Gas campaigns) and the Environmental Defense Fund ($6 million to stop hydraulic fracturing), according to Wikipedia.

Bloomberg Philanthropies also gave $6 million in 2017 to create the New York University School of Law’s Environment and Energy Impact Center to provide lawyers to state attorneys general whose sole focus would be on environmental and climate change lawsuits and regulatory actions, according to a story authored by Jessica R. Towhey in Inside Sources…..