Economic history

Does a Public Good Argument Justify Subsidizing Private Energy Production?

Economic history, Economics, Energy markets, Technology / By

Michael Giberson Yesterday I disputed the analysis by which the Breakthough Institute wanted to claim credit on behalf of the federal government for the shale gas boom; today I dispute their claimed broader implications for federal energy R&D policy. Late in their op-ed, the Breakthrough folks shift emphasis from a narrow drilling technology story to …

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Did the Federal Government Invent the Shale Gas Boom?

20 Comments / Economic history, Economics, Technology / By

Michael Giberson In the Washington Post the folks at the Breakthrough Institute try to learn us some history about the shale gas boom. Maybe you think the shale gas boom was some big surprise suddenly made real after the decades-long work of a hard-headed oil and gas guy – George Mitchell – willing to spend …

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Why Did Water Utilities in the U.S. Become Mostly Publicly Owned?

2 Comments / Economic history, Economics, Electricity / By

Michael Giberson Among U.S. water utilities, some are publicly owned and some are privately owned. Same thing for gas utilities and electric utilities. But unlike in the gas and electric power industries, the water business has become predominantly organized by publicly-owned utilities. Scott Masten explores why it was that public utility ownership became dominant among …

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Smil’s Brief List of the Pioneering Creators of Electric Systems

3 Comments / Economic history, Electricity / By

Michael Giberson In the process of explaining why Steve Jobs, though talented, is no Thomas Edison, Vaclav Smil name-drops a “brief list of the pioneering creators of electric systems”: This fundamental innovation [the electric power system] was created during a remarkably short period of time—most of it between the late 1870s and the beginning of …

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Yergin on Oil, II

2 Comments / Economic history, Energy markets, Politics, Technology / By

Michael Giberson I second Lynne’s recommendation of Yergin’s column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. On the topic of Hubbert’s peak and peak oil generally, I particularly recommend these two paragraphs: Hubbert insisted that price didn’t matter. Economics—the forces of supply and demand—were, he maintained, irrelevant to the finite physical cache of oil in the …

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The Industrial Revolution Required More Energy Resources Than Provided by the Annual Cycle of Photosynthesis

Economic history, Economics / By

Michael Giberson Tony Wrigley’s new book is Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. He provides some flavor of the fundamental thesis of the book in a post at VoxEU.org: “Opening Pandora’s box: A new look at the industrial revolution“: The most fundamental defining feature of the industrial revolution was that it made possible exponential economic …

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Devon Energy’s Bet on Barnett Shale, Made 10 Years Ago, Has Paid off

Economic history, Energy markets, Technology / By

Michael Giberson Yesterday, August 14, 2011, was the ten-year anniversary of the announcement by Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy of its intention to acquire Houston-based Mitchell Energy and Development for $3.5 billion. The prime target of interest lay about halfway between the two company headquarters, in the Barnett Shale surrounding Fort Worth, Texas. Mitchell had figured …

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Role of Independent Producers in the Early Development of California’s Oil and Gas Industry

Economic history, Energy markets / By

Michael Giberson The Summer 2010 issue of Business History Review included an interesting article on the role of independent producers in the development of the oil and gas industry in California. In the article, Michael Adamson makes the case that official statistics on oil production overstate the role played by large, vertically integrated oil companies …

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