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David Fickling Profile picture
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9 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Quiz time. Who said this, and when?

"I’ve become convinced that the oil companies are politically irresponsible and, in fact, idiots. They are concerned only with profits."
We have a winner!

That correct answer was dazzlingly quick!

history.state.gov/historicaldocu…
Calling random people dumb idiots maybe pointed towards Kissinger, especially with the line on profits suggesting something pre-Jack Welch 😆

Still impressed. 😎

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David Fickling Profile picture
9 Nov
Another fun detail in this documents: One of the key responses proposed was to release oil by fracturing tight domestic rock formations, ie. fracking.

Small twist: The fracking technology they suggested was NUCLEAR BOMBS. 🤯
"The AEC still believes that it would be relatively easy physically to open up gas resources at the rate of one trillion cubic feet per year with the explosion of one hundred nuclear devices a year."

Simples!

history.state.gov/historicaldocu…
"The problem is essentially one of public resistance to the nuclear detonations which would be required."
Read 6 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
4 Nov
A side-story to this (very welcome) news:

Calculating global fossil-fuel emissions is something a numerate teenager can do on a laptop.

Calculating global land-use emissions? We're mostly just staggering around in semi-darkness.
We know how much carbon there is in fossil fuels and how much CO2 they produce when burned. These are global commodities whose production volumes are well-known.

Multiply the two and you have a good-enough number for FF emissions. The best analysis merely refines this sum.
Whereas calculating land-use emissions involve multiple calculations about the carbon cycles of different ecosystems, and how those ecosystems link up, and are being changed by climate change itself, etc. etc. There's an awful lot that we don't know in all of this!
Read 10 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
4 Nov
It is truly breathtaking the speed with which coal is vanishing from the world economy.

I remember writing in mid-2019 that the world's last coal plant will soon be built, and thinking I was going waaay out on a limb:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Now we have 190 countries turning 2019's contentious argument into 2021's reality, committing to end investment in new coal power and phase it out in major economies during the 2030s:

gov.uk/government/new… Image
There's a lot unsaid in that statement, and we really need to see the full text.

What about the other 7 countries in the UNFCCC who haven't signed up, and who are they? (Looking at you, Australia)

*When* does investment in new coal end, and *when* does the phaseout go to zero?
Read 14 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
3 Nov
Something to think about as India starts to reduce its dependence on coal.

The first map is districts affected by the 54-year-old Naxalite insurgency.

The second map shows India's coalfields. ImageImage
The Godavari valley in the east of the country is central to both the insurgency and the coal industry.

We don't know that much about the Naxalites' funding model, but extortion of wealthy local businesses such as mining and coal processing and transport seems to be important.
The insurgency has declined dramatically in recent years but it seems to be in the coal belt that it's hanging on longest.

If the coal industry declines, does that weaken the insurgency (less money, less land expropriation) or strengthen it (fewer jobs, more discontent)?
Read 4 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
2 Nov
A net zero target from Nigeria is truly extraordinary, and a testament to the level of ambition we're seeing from emerging economies now.

There is no way this would be happening if zero-carbon technologies hadn't so drastically undercut fossil fuels on cost.
Nigeria is of course Africa's biggest oil producer with the world's biggest conventional reserves after the Middle East, Russia and the U.S., roughly equal with Venezuela.
And it is at the bottom of the escalator of energy-intensive development and industrialization that India is now climbing and China is stepping off.
Read 6 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
27 Oct
Very much agree with this @matt_levine piece about the simpler explanation for the lack of oil drilling in the U.S.: it's not ESG, it's just usual expectations around cashflows.

The past ~15 years in oil markets make show this pretty well:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… via @bopinion
@bopinion When I first started following energy markets 15 years ago, the big thing everyone was talking about was the revenge of state oil companies and the decline of the old "Seven Sisters" -- Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, Total, Eni, etc:

ft.com/content/471ae1…
The thinking here was pretty straightforward. The offshore and onshore oil basins outside of OPEC that oil importers and international oil companies had used to diversify supply since the 1970s oil crisis (the North Sea, for instance) were more or less tapped out.
Read 21 tweets

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