Trump’s former energy secretary claims Biden’s policies could lead to ‘disaster’

Published

4 years ago

November 8, 2021

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Donald Trump’s former energy secretary on Sunday attacked the Biden administration’s energy policies, linking them to inflation and claiming that restrictions on the U.S. oil industry and rising costs at home could lead to “disaster.”

Energy prices have leaped globally in the last three months. Natural gas has soared almost 600% this year, and international oil benchmark Brent crude is up more than 60% year to date. Currently, crude is hovering around $82 per barrel.

“The Biden administration’s restrictive actions — no to pipelines, no to drilling, no to the financing of oil and gas projects overseas … is a stunning reversal of the energy independence achieved under the Trump administration,” Rick Perry told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble.

The United States never stopped importing oil during the Trump administration, though domestic production rose. On a monthly basis, U.S. production edged higher than consumption during most of 2019 and 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But the most recent EIA data shows that pattern continuing after Biden became president in 2021, including U.S. exports of energy continuing to exceed imports.

As gas prices have risen in the United States, the Biden White House has pressured OPEC and its oil-producing allies including Russia to accelerate plans to increase output. But that group, called OPEC+, last week said it would stick with its plan to increase output by 400,000 barrels per day starting in December.

“The potential for disaster is very real, both in a national security standpoint, and whether or not we literally can keep the lights on,” Perry said.

Perry oversaw pro-oil industry policies during his time at the Department of Energy. A former governor of Texas, he has close ties to the Texas oil industry and has held leadership roles on the boards of two petroleum companies.

The inflation problem

Aside from pressuring OPEC to produce more oil, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm has pushed the Biden administration’s plans to develop domestic clean energy, arguing argued that the U.S. should focus on renewable energy as a long-term strategy to ensure the U.S. isn’t “reliant on political adversaries.”

Perry pointed out an apparent contradiction between the Biden administration’s stance on clean energy and its pressure on OPEC+ to produce more oil.

“On the one hand, you’ve got John Kerry, jetting all around the world, lecturing people about the use of fossil fuels, and then you have the Secretary of Energy Mrs. Granholm standing up and begging His Royal Highness Abdulaziz bin Salman to send more crude so we can drive down the cost of gasoline,” Perry said.

“Our people are hurting,” said Perry, citing broadly rising costs in the United States. He added that he thinks “$100 oil within the next six months is possible.”

U.S. annual inflation rose at its fastest pace in more than 30 years during September, despite a decline in personal income, the U.S. Commerce Department reported last month.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

President Joe Biden blames high costs squarely on OPEC+ countries, while some oil drillers blame restrictions on the fossil fuel industry. Granholm has pointed out that the pandemic slowed U.S. oil and gas investment and drilling.

To combat rising prices, Granholm told Bloomberg in an interview last week that tapping America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve “is certainly on the table as an option.”

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds up to 714 million barrels of crude oil. It’s located in sites along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts and is the world’s largest backup oil supply. It’s designed as a buffer to protect the United States from a major supply disruption, such as a natural disaster or war.

Perry pointed out that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve isn’t designed for “long-term assistance,” adding that tapping it would be “a fool’s errand.”

“They’re there for a hurricane or some type of a national disaster that occurs,” Perry said. “You go in, you use it, it’s [for] a short period of time,” Perry said, adding, “I don’t know what tools [Biden]’s got in the toolbox. I think he’s making it up as he goes.”

Biden said on Saturday his administration has “other tools” to deal with high oil prices. “There are other tools in the arsenal that we have to deal with other countries at an appropriate time,” he said.

Environment

Tesla is forced to remove 64 Superchargers on NJ Turnpike, Musk claims ‘corruption’

Published

5 hours ago

June 3, 2025

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Tesla is forced to remove 64 Superchargers on NJ Turnpike, Musk claims 'corruption'

Tesla is being forced to remove 64 Superchargers at stations along the New Jersey Turnpike as the local authorities have decided to go with another provider.

Elon Musk claimed corruption without any evidence.

The New Jersey Turnpike is a system of controlled-access toll roads that consists of a 100-mile section of important New Jersey highways.

In 2020, Tesla signed an agreement with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA)and built 64 Supercharger stalls at 8 stations along the turnpike.

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The agreement has now expired, and instead of renewing it, the authority decided to give an exclusive agreement to Applegreen, which already operates in all service areas on the turnpike.

Tesla issued a statement saying that it is disappointed with the situation, but that it has prepared for this by building new stations off the turnpike for the last few years:

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority (“NJTA”) has chosen a sole third-party charging provider to serve the New Jersey Turnpike and is not allowing us to co-locate. As a result, NJTA requested 64 existing Supercharger stalls on the New Jersey Turnpike to not be renewed and be decommissioned. We have been preparing for 3 years for this potential outcome by building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike, ensuring no interruption for our customers. The map below outlines the existing replacement Superchargers, and Trip Planner will adjust automatically.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk went a step further and called it “corruption” without any evidence.

The automaker’s agreement with NJTA expired, and they decided to go with a sole provider. Applegreen will reportedly deploy chargers at all 21 turnpike service stops.

Here are Tesla’s replacement Superchargers off the turnpike:

Electrek’s Take

I don’t like the decision from the Turnpike authorities. More chargers are better than fewer chargers. However, I also don’t like Musk calling everything he doesn’t like fraud or corruption.

While I agree with Tesla that it is unreasonable to force them to remove the stations, it appears to be an oversight on Tesla’s part not to have included stipulations in their agreement to prevent such a scenario from happening in the first place.

Who signs a deal to deploy millions of dollars worth of charging equipment with only the right to operate them there for 5 years?

It looks like Tesla knew this was coming since it specifically built several new Supercharger stations off the turnpike to prepare for this.

On the other hand, I don’t like the Turnpike Authority using the term “universal charger” as if this is a positive for Applegreen. They are going to use CCS, and everyone is moving to NACS in North America.

Yes, for a while, only Tesla owners will have to use adapters, but that will soon change and the current NACS Supercharger will be even more useful.

At the end of the day, the stations are already there. Let them operate them.

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Environment

E-quipment highlight: ZQUIP heavy equipment battery swap demo [video]

Published

6 hours ago

June 3, 2025

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E-quipment highlight: ZQUIP heavy equipment battery swap demo [video]

ZQUIP is working hard to bring more smart, efficient, modular power solutions to commercial job sites everywhere – and at the core of their vision for the future is battery-swap technology. You can see just how easy it is make that happen here.

MOOG Construction’s energy skunkworks ZQUIP made headlines last year by bringing the cordless power tool battery model to the world of industrial-grade heavy equipment.

“The 700V ZQUIP Energy Modules are at the core of this innovation, said Chris LaFleur, managing director for QUIP. “ZQUIP modules are interchangeable across any machine we convert regardless of size, type, or manufacturer, and will enable a level of serviceability, runtime, and value that is far greater than current battery solutions.”

At this year’s bauma equipment show in Munich, Germany, however, ZQUIP followed up that headline by making it even easier for job sites to make every kilowatt count by enabling them to switch from diesel power, to electric, and back again, on the same machine, on the job site.

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Why you want that

ZQUIP Adds Diesel Option to All-Electric Construction Vehicle Conversions — ZQUIP generator prototype on Caterpillar excavator; via ZQUIP.

Most machines on most sites sit idle most of the time, but converting all those machines to battery electric power means that megawatts of battery capacity are being wasted. By utilizing swappable batteries, job sites can do what technicians and contractors have been doing for years with power tools: quickly get the energy they need to the tool they need when they need it, without the need to have a dedicated battery for every tool.

If you need to be able to run the machine non-stop and don’t have a reliable way to recharge your batteries quickly enough, a 140 kW diesel generator is built into a package the same size and shape as the batteries. In fact, if you look closely at the CASE excavator below (on the right), the “battery” on the right is, in fact, a diesel Energy Module.

The demo video, below, shows a pair of CASE-based electric excavators – one wheeled, one tracked – operating on ZQUIP’s Energy Modules. It takes less than two minutes to remove one battery, and presumably about the same time to swap another one in, for a 5 (ish) minute swap.

Even if you call it ten, by eliminating the need to get the entire machine up and out for charging (or for service, if there’s an issue with the battery/controllers), the ZQUIP battery swap construction equipment solution seems like a good one.

ZQUIP HDEV battery swap

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SOURCE | IMAGES: ZQUIP.

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Environment

Trump administration is convinced massive Alaska energy project will find investors despite steep cost

Published

10 hours ago

June 2, 2025

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Energy Sec. Wright on Alaska LNG project: Financing is straight forward if you have customers

The Trump administration is confident that a massive liquified natural gas project in Alaska will find investors despite its enormous cost.

President Donald Trump has pushed Alaska LNG as a national priority since taking office. Alaska has already spent years trying to build an 800-mile pipeline from the North Slope above the Arctic Circle south to the Cook Inlet, where the gas would be cooled and shipped to U.S. allies in Asia.

But Alaska LNG has never gotten off the ground due to a stratospheric price tag of more than $40 billion. Trump has pushed Japan and South Korea in particular to invest in the project, threatening them with higher tariffs if they don’t offer trade deals that suit him.

“If you get the commercial offtakers for the gas, financing is pretty straightforward,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. “There [are] countries around the world looking to shrink their trade deficit with the United States, and of course, a very easy way to do that is to buy more American energy,” Wright said.

Energy analysts, however, are skeptical of the project. Alaska LNG “doesn’t have a clear cut commercial logic,” Alex Munton, director of global gas and LNG research at Rapidan Energy, told CNBC in April.

“If it did, it would have had a lot more support than it has thus far, and this project has been on the planning board for literally decades,” Munton said.

Defense Department support

Wright said the project would be built in stages and initially serve domestic demand in Alaska, which faces declining natural gas supplies in the Cook Inlet. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the Department of Defense is ready to support the project with its resources.

“They’re ready to sign on to take an offtake agreement from this pipeline to get gas to our super strategic, important bases across Alaska,” Burgum said of the Pentagon in a CNBC interview at Prudhoe Bay.

Interior Sec. Burgum on Alaska LNG pipeline: Permits virtually all in line, issued and ready to go

Alaska LNG, if completed, would deliver U.S. natural gas to Japan in about eight days, compared to about 24 days for U.S. Gulf Coast exports that pass through the congested Panama Canal, Burgum said. It would also avoid contested waters in the South China Sea that LNG exports from the Middle East pass through, the interior secretary said.

Wright said potential Asian investors have questions about the timeline and logistics of Alaska LNG. The pipeline could start delivering LNG to southern Alaska in 2028 or 2029, with exports to Asia beginning sometime in the early 2030s, Wright said.

Glenfarne Group, the project’s lead developer, told CNBC in April that a final investment decision is expected in the next six to 12 months on the leg of a proposed pipeline that runs from the North Slope to Anchorage. Glenfarne is a privately-held developer, owner and operator of energy infrastructure based in New York City and Houston.