Energy markets

My Congressman Invites Me to Submit & Join*

Michael Giberson In the inbox this afternoon, an emailed letter from my Congressman, Randy Neugebauer, who queries me (and I guess thousands of my neighbors as well) in this manner: Notice the congressman’s question, “do you believe we should be maximizing the development of our domestic oil and gas resources?” and the button labeled “Submit …

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Green Energy Paradox: Hotelling’s Exhaustible Resource and Consequences of Improving the Alternatives

Michael Giberson The “green power paradox” grabs Hotelling by the ankles, turns him upside down, and shakes the change out of his pockets. Harold Hotelling’s classic article, “The Economics of Exhaustible Resources,” observes that the owner of an exhaustible resource stock always is making choices in the shadow of the future. If the owner produces …

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The Federal Government’s Natural Gas R&d Breakthrough

Michael Giberson In the recent edition of The American magazine, the on-line journal of the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus write in defense of the President’s State of the Union address claim of federal government credit for the shale gas revolution. (For those of you not keeping score at home, (1) I commented …

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A.C. Pigou, Public Choice Economist, on the Use of Government

Michael Giberson At the end of a comment on Windfall, a new documentary on the effects of wind power development on a community in upstate New York, Michael Munger pulls out the key Pigou quote. Pigou is relevant because the best possible case to be made for subsidizing wind power production involves correcting for the …

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Lng Exports, the View from the Brookings Institution

Michael Giberson The Brookings Institution’s Energy Security Initiative has been looking at the changing natural gas market including, among other things, potential issues surrounding LNG exports from the United States. Overall it looks like reasonable stuff. But one claim made in a recent Brooking report [pdf], highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article today, had …

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Congressman Markey Still Worries About U.S. Natural Gas Exports

Michael Giberson A few weeks back Congressman Ed Markey asked the U.S. Department of Energy whether exports of natural gas might not be in the public interest (see prior note here, related note) as exports would tend to push U.S. gas prices higher. The USDOE’s response apparently didn’t mitigate Markey’s concern; today the Congressman introduced …

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A Secret to Chipotle’s Good-food-fast Innovations

Michael Giberson At Slate, Matthew Yglesias tells the story of a business that is booming: Chipotle’s Mexican Grill, “a company that shows there’s clearly room for growth and innovation in even the most basic sectors of the economy.” The chain has been expanding rapidly, Chipotle’s stock has risen 500 percent over 5 years, and yet: …

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Art Berman Spots Distress in the Natural Gas Industry

Michael Giberson Apparently I’m just a hot-headed, temperamental guy unwilling to sit still and listen to a patient explanation of a contrary point of view. I’ve only read the first paragraph of Art Berman’s new post at the The Oil Drum and already I’m arguing with my computer screen and searching around for data to illustrate my …

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Honeywell International Inc. Claims Nest Thermostat Infringes on Patents in Federal Court Lawsuit

Michael Giberson Economist Alex Tabarrok, author of Launching the Innovation Renaissance and Marginal Revolution blogger, worries that the proliferation of patents is stifling innovation, particularly patents for business processes. In an interview with Russ Roberts for EconTalk, Tabarrok remarked that large companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google building up massive numbers of patents mostly to …

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