Chip Edwards

Happy Pipeliners Day

@Dostoevskyquot The conspiracy against the human race.

What's one book that hit differently than the rest? Classic, modern, obscure. Doesn't matter.

Cool

Grumpiest TSA award stays with Chicago. Thanks for the warm welcome.

Cigar culture in Tokyo is amazing.

@BreannaMorello I only happened to see this post which I absolutely agree with because of timing. I happened to switch to most recent view.

The algorithm on this platform has gotten terrible. It started by trying to position itself as a news source, but now it’s actively punishing legitimate journalists for frequently posting.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ This isn’t the solution for independent journalists.

@TheTruthHurtsY2 @US_OGA @TheBlueKrush Off coast of Panama City. Nice mix. Containers oil and a few LNG.

@US_OGA @TheBlueKrush Off the gulf Galveston, Texas. Tankers stretch the entire horizon. Simply amazing.

The second biggest miracle is when the enviros and their enablers in Congress and the media tried to ban fracking -- we kicked their butts.

@Breaking911 i crossed the bridge about 15 minutes before this happened. there was bumper to bumper traffic when I crossed. Glad it was flowing.

WATCH: Massive explosion from a tanker near the Bridge of the Americas in Panama City, Panama

Americans fly to Turkey for $3,000 dental implants that cost $40,000 in Manhattan. They drive to Tijuana for $800 MRIs priced at $12,000 in San Diego (literally 15 minutes north). Medical tourism revenue hit $100 billion globally in 2023 while US healthcare spending broke $4.5 trillion. The market speaks louder than any policy wonk ever could. When you can get the same cardiac surgery in Bangkok for $15,000 that costs $200,000 in Boston—using the same equipment, often better facilities, and surgeons trained at Johns Hopkins—the pricing isn't reflecting scarcity or quality. It's reflecting capture. Insurance companies created this beautiful racket where they negotiate "discounts" off artificially inflated prices, hospitals play along because the government backstops the whole charade through Medicare reimbursements, and pharmaceutical companies... well, they just price whatever the market will bear (which turns out to be everything you own plus your firstborn). Austrian school economists predicted this decades ago. When you remove price signals and direct payment, costs explode. When Americans rediscover actual market prices by flying to Mumbai for heart surgery, suddenly they remember what healthcare actually costs when providers compete for cash-paying customers instead of...

"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but, protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed." Ayn Rand

The Hormuz crisis is the precipitating factor in the current energy crisis, but the underlying cause is too little oil and gas production outside the Persian Gulf. Had the world spent the past decade building the oil, gas, LNG, pipeline, and fertilizer infrastructure that engineers designed and companies proposed, the Hormuz crisis would still be a serious geopolitical event, but it would not threaten to cause a recession. North America — The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile natural gas line from West Virginia to North Carolina, saw its cost double from $4.5 billion to $8 billion during years of environmental litigation before Duke Energy and Dominion Energy cancelled it in July 2020. — The Constitution Pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York died the same year. — The PennEast Pipeline won its case at the United States Supreme Court in 2021 and still could not get built because New Jersey refused to issue state permits. — In Canada, TransCanada abandoned the $15.7 billion Energy East pipeline in 2017 after the National Energy Board required an unprecedented review of upstream and downstream emissions. — In January 2024, the Biden administration paused all pending approvals for LNG export terminals shipping to non-free-trade-agreement countries, freezing projects representing tens of billions of cubic feet per day of potential capacity. — Venture Global’s CP2 terminal in Louisiana, designed for 20 million tonnes per annum, sat in regulatory limbo for over a year. — NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG in Texas, with 48 MTPA of planned capacity, stalled alongside it. — PTT Global Chemical’s proposed $10 billion ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio, first announced in 2015, remains on indefinite hold after failing to attract financing partners amid climate-driven investor sentiment. — Across the US Gulf Coast, nearly 60% of planned plastic and petrochemical production projects sit on hold. — LNG Canada, the Shell-led terminal at Kitimat, British Columbia, took over six years from construction start to first cargo, with its pipeline running 263% over budget. Environmental review, Indigenous disputes, and contractor cost escalation all contributed. — Pieridae Energy’s Goldboro LNG project in Nova Scotia, a 10 MTPA facility first proposed in 2012, was abandoned in November 2023 after more than a decade of permitting and financing obstacles. Australia — Australia’s Santos’s Barossa gas project was halted midway through construction after a Federal Court ruling overturned its environmental approval. — Woodside’s Scarborough project faces ongoing litigation from the Australian Conservation Foundation seeking to block it on climate grounds. Africa — Perhaps nowhere has the damage been more consequential than in Africa. At COP26 in 2021, wealthy nations pledged to halt overseas development finance for gas projects, a commitment that fell hardest on the continent least responsible for climate change and most in need of energy infrastructure. — The World Bank stopped financing oil and gas extraction in 2019 and imposed restrictive conditions on downstream gas projects. — The European Investment Bank announced a complete ban on unabated fossil fuel financing by the end of 2021, with its president declaring that “gas is over.” — At least 21 other development finance institutions followed suit. As a result: — TotalEnergies’ Mozambique LNG project sat under force majeure for four and a half years after the UK Export Credit Agency and other backers withdrew climate-motivated financing. — The East African Crude Oil Pipeline lost financing commitments from more than 30 major international banks under pressure from climatists. Europe — France prevented the completion of a third gas interconnector with Spain, citing climate neutrality goals. — The United Kingdom imposed a moratorium on fracking in 2019 despite sitting atop one of Europe’s most promising shale gas formations. — Germany, which shuttered its last three nuclear plants in April 2023, compounded its gas dependency by refusing to develop domestic shale resources. — CF Industries permanently shut the UK’s largest ammonia plant at Billingham, a facility that also produced 60% of Britain’s food-grade CO2. — Yara International curtailed output across plants in France, Italy, and Belgium before permanently closing its 400,000 tonne per year ammonia facility at Tertre, Belgium, in October 2024. These closures occurred because European climate policy made gas too expensive for the domestic industry to survive.

@scottlincicome @cpgrabow @CatoInstitute Or maybe let American companies build pipelines again in America.

"You can't make this stuff up" - @cpgrabow #EndTheJonesAct

@profstonge Great episode.

The 2026 deficit just hit $1 trillion. And it’s only March. The good news is that’s $140 billion less than 2025. The bad news is our “Small Government” GOP actually hiked spending from Biden. Then they took even more in taxes.

now that is funny

dang

VIDEO EXPLAINER: The most important map of the Third Gulf War — the oilfields, the Strait of Hormuz, and the bypass pipelines. Plus a look at how, two weeks into the war, Iran is still exporting lots of its oil, and most of it, via the strait. @opinion

@profstonge Understand. Statement was just for reference.

@chipwithdip44 The funds needed to come from Congress.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was built so we’d never be caught flat-footed by a Middle East war. It took 30 years to fill. Then Biden drained it by half to buy an election.

Remember: insurance is still just access to capital at a reduced rate on a contingent basis. If you truly believe you are overpaying, nothing is stopping you from weighing options to transfer insured risk to balance sheet risk. Captive feasibility study is a good place to start for many. Vast majority who go through this exercise & actually look at the dollars involved end up back at insurance from first principles.