Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part 2. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 Edition.

 

Oil field, Grass Creek, Wyo, April 9, 1916

April 16, 2024

The BLM's new oil and gas leasing rules has effectuated new oil and gas leasing rules for the first time since 1988.

The new rules adjust bond amounts for the first time since 1966, increase royalty rates for the first time in over a century (leasing has only been in place for a century). Bond rates will go from $10,000 to $150,000 and state-wide bonding requirement for operators with more than from $25,000 to $500,000.

Governor Gordon criticizes oil and gas rule that raises costs to producers

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –Governor Mark Gordon is criticizing an announcement from the Department of Interior last week that will increase the costs to oil and gas companies seeking to drill on federal lands. The Governor used the following statement:

“If there was any doubt, it could not be more clear now that the Department of Interior has lost its way. Within a day of announcing its renewable energy rule designed to promote the equivalent of a modern-day gold rush of development for renewables by reducing fees and rents on federal lands by 80%, Interior issued an oil and gas rule increasing costs to Wyoming’s industry by 1400%.

America surely needs more energy, including from renewable sources. What our country does not need are policies that greatly reduce the return to our nation’s taxpayers while simultaneously increasing the impacts and burdens on states and communities. We don’t need policies that increase the costs to consumers while also reducing reliability, or rules that sharpen the threat of industrializing our open spaces and crucial wildlife habitat without recognizing the importance of balance in our energy portfolio. These policies should seem misguided to most Americans of every stripe who love our country. Instead of experience and practicality, DOI has doubled down on bias, dogma, and politics. America is suffering as a result.

It is time we get back to common-sense energy policy. I will continue to fight against federal policies that are short-sighted and antagonistic to Wyoming’s industries, our workers, and our way of life. We need to build a realistic, all-of-the-above energy strategy that correctly plans a future of reliable and dispatchable power and properly accounts for – and balances – the costs and impacts of all energy sources.”

April 19, 2024

Tensions in the Middle East have jumped the price of oil back up. 

April 27, 2024

Ur Energy will reopen It's in situ uranium mine and processing plant in Shirley Basin in 2026.

The UAW has entered into a tentative deal with Daimler.

Wyoming is suing the Federal government over a methane rule.

Wyoming Sues Biden Administration Over Costly and Burdensome Methane Rule

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Wyoming has joined the states of North Dakota, Montana and Texas in suing the U.S. Department of Interior and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over a new rule that undermines existing state regulatory programs and harms Wyoming oil and natural gas producers.

The suit was filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. The rule – commonly known as the “methane waste prevention rule” and released last month – is an attempt by the Department of Interior to re-introduce a similar rule adopted by the Obama Administration in 2016. That rule was previously blocked by a Wyoming federal court.

The new rule requires oil and gas companies to pay royalties on flared gas, driving up costs for producers and resulting in increased costs to consumers, the Governor said.

“This rule is yet another example of the Biden Administration attempting to use rulemaking to undermine state authority and suffocate the oil and gas industry,” Governor Gordon said. “We will continue to defend Wyoming’s interests in court whenever they are under attack by the federal government.”

Governor Gordon has previously pointed out Wyoming is a national leader in regulating methane gas, with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission working cooperatively with oil and gas producers to reduce emissions. The states’ complaint explains that the new rule conflicts with state regulations and in certain instances, creates less stringent standards.

The states’ complaint may be found here.

In a major action, a new EPA rule may actually end coal-fired power plants by 2032. Tom Lubnau on that matter:

Tom Lubnau: EPA Increases Wyoming Industry Political Risk, Again

That would be an epic level change in electrical generation in the United States, although its something we've seen coming for a long time:

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

Last prior edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part I. And then the day arrived (part two).2020s, 2023, 2024, Agriculture, Alcohol, Coal, Economics, Electrical Power, Petroleum, Sheep, Solar Energy, Subsidiarity, technology, trends, Wind Power, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Technological Acclimation and Mystic Pizza

Sometimes you don't realize how acclimated you've become to technology until you experience it in an odd fashion.

The other night I was flipping  though the channels and hit upon the movie Mystic Pizza.  I've seen it before. It's really not worth watching and I knew that when I hit on it.

For those who haven't seen it, don't bother.  A synopsis of the plot, or rather plots, is as follows, as it plays into what I've noted here as the theme of this entry.  The movie follows the lives and loves of three young Portuguese American women, who all  work at a pizza restaurant in the Connecticut seaport town of Mystic.  They characters are Kat Araujo, played by Annabeth Gish (no relationship to the great silent screen star Lillian Gish), Daisy Araujo, played by the then up and coming Julia Roberts and Jojo Barbosa, played by the Lili Taylor.

Note that none of the actresses are Portuguese Americans.*

Anyhow, the basic gist of the film is that Kat and Daisy are sisters, and Kat is bound in the near future for Yale, while Daisy is wild and not bound for Yale.  Jojo is tied up in romance with a Portuguese American fisherman and the film starts off with their wedding, which is interrupted for most of the film when she collapses during the ceremony, burdened with the thought of the seriousness of the obligation she's embarking upon.

None of which has all that much to do with what I'm noting, but two parts of the plot do, and they both involve telephones.

Daisy has met a "preppy" (this 1988 film was made during the preppy era) who is a failed law student. His booting out from law school hasn't interrupted his wealth somehow, to we have the Townie/Preppy romance thing going on, a theme that dates back in various ways to the silent film era.  Kat is not only working at Mystic Pizza, but is also baby sitting the daughter of a young architect whose wife is off in England.  Yeah, you can probably see how all these plots develop from there.

Anyhow, in once scene the Daisy character is supposed to go to dinner with Preppy dude and meet his parents, but Kat, who is supposed to fill in for her at the pizza joint, doesn't show up.  Daisy tries to call her but the handset has been kicked off the phone at the Architect's house where Architect, daughter and Kat are watching television.

That struck me there simply because now you'd call on your cell.  If nobody answered you'd text.

It didn't disrupt me watching the film, and indeed I didn't have much invested in it anyhow, but that just struck me.

More significantly, however, late in the movie Architect and Kat arrange to go to a giant 18th Century house he is working on Halloween night as the house is reputedly haunted.  Note, I didn't say this movie was good.  While there, the predictable happens.  Jojo, meanwhile, has agreed to participate in this evil by watching daughter, whereupon she discovers her love for children in a weakly developed part of the film which in turn will lead to the resumption of her nuptials.  Anyhow, just like a silent film, Wife returns from England and Jojo is forced into making up a strained lie as to the missing husband and babysitter.

At that point, automatically, a modern viewer will think, as this takes place in world not all that long ago and otherwise pretty much like ours, "why doesn't she call Kat on her cell phone or text?".  It's literally impossible not to.  Of course, she can't.  They didn't exist.

That's actually my sole point in noting this movie watching experience.  I'm now so used to cell phones that my first reaction is "why doesn't she use her cell phone?", and the thought keeps repeating as you are watching these scenes.

Okay, while on this, why did I watch this, again?

I don't really know.  I know that the first time I watched this movie on television it was a few years after its release as a fellow who was in law school at the same time I was, and who was from a somewhat well heeled family in Connecticut, took enormous offense to the movie at the time it was released.  I recall him asking me if I'd seen it one day at law school.  I didn't watch very many movies while in law school (maybe none) and I'd never heard of it.  I recall his view was that the movie maker, whom he knew, knew nothing about Portuguese Americans in Connecticut.  At the time, and upon the first viewing, I was pretty surprised that he'd be so wrapped up in that as he certainly wasn't a Connecticut Portuguese American either.

None of that justifies watching this film again, but there was nothing on and I was on the verge of falling asleep so I just left it on.  Having seen it now, I think I agree with the critic noted.  Everything, including the Portuguese nature of the protagonist, is pretty underdeveloped.  You only know that they're Portuguese as somebody says something about it now and then and their being Catholic is mentioned a couple of times and oddly inserted a couple of times.

FWIW, there really is a Mystic Pizza.  Most of the people who have seen this film apparently like it, as opposed to me, who does not, and following the film, the real Mystic Pizza was redone to look like the one in the move, which provides an odd example of art following life following art, I guess.