New Englanders have only themselves to blame for energy price spikes
Cold snaps like the one the U.S. northeast has experienced this month are great opportunities to learn how energy markets work — or don’t work. All one has to do is watch energy prices rise and fall in different regions during severe cold weather.
New Year’s Day 2018 was the coldest yet in the 21st century in the contiguous 48 states, with “Dangerously cold wind chills” setting records from Maryland to Maine. Boston has tied a 100-year record for seven days in a row with a high below 20 degrees Fahrenheit — and that was before the worst of the weather storm hit. No wonder meteorologists were calling the recent weather formation a “winter bomb cyclone.”
Both prices and demand for domestic natural gas have surged as people have started plugging in their space heaters. Gas consumption set a new record for daily use on January 1, surpassing the previous record set in January 2014 in the midst of the “Polar Vortex.” Energy prices in most of the country increased 20–30 percent to account for the strong demand before quickly returning to previous levels. But in parts of New England prices spiked more than 400 percent.
Why? New England — including Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island — is the only part of the country that has constrained supplies of natural gas. This constraint is largely self-induced by “above-ground” political issues. Local and state opposition have blocked a number of natural gas pipelines in recent years, with the result that the region hasn’t benefited from the gas production growth in the Marcellus shale formation in nearby Pennsylvania
This means that the 50,000 miles of U.S. natural gas pipelines built during the past decade largely skipped New England, leaving the region with the highest electricity prices in the United States. A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found residents in the Northeast pay 44 percent more than the national average for electricity and 29 percent more for natural gas. Industrial users of electricity pay 60 percent more than the national average, according to the Chamber.
Being green and a nimby ain't cheap.
Many wallets artificially lightened by liberals denial of the dreaded law of supply and demand.
I'm sure they will blame those pesky deplorable non Yankee imperialists much like the leaders of that utopia Venezuela.
Commies gotta Commie don't ya know.
It's a wicked pissah.
Cold snaps like the one the U.S. northeast has experienced this month are great opportunities to learn how energy markets work — or don’t work. All one has to do is watch energy prices rise and fall in different regions during severe cold weather.
New Year’s Day 2018 was the coldest yet in the 21st century in the contiguous 48 states, with “Dangerously cold wind chills” setting records from Maryland to Maine. Boston has tied a 100-year record for seven days in a row with a high below 20 degrees Fahrenheit — and that was before the worst of the weather storm hit. No wonder meteorologists were calling the recent weather formation a “winter bomb cyclone.”
Both prices and demand for domestic natural gas have surged as people have started plugging in their space heaters. Gas consumption set a new record for daily use on January 1, surpassing the previous record set in January 2014 in the midst of the “Polar Vortex.” Energy prices in most of the country increased 20–30 percent to account for the strong demand before quickly returning to previous levels. But in parts of New England prices spiked more than 400 percent.
Why? New England — including Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island — is the only part of the country that has constrained supplies of natural gas. This constraint is largely self-induced by “above-ground” political issues. Local and state opposition have blocked a number of natural gas pipelines in recent years, with the result that the region hasn’t benefited from the gas production growth in the Marcellus shale formation in nearby Pennsylvania
This means that the 50,000 miles of U.S. natural gas pipelines built during the past decade largely skipped New England, leaving the region with the highest electricity prices in the United States. A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found residents in the Northeast pay 44 percent more than the national average for electricity and 29 percent more for natural gas. Industrial users of electricity pay 60 percent more than the national average, according to the Chamber.
Being green and a nimby ain't cheap.
Many wallets artificially lightened by liberals denial of the dreaded law of supply and demand.
I'm sure they will blame those pesky deplorable non Yankee imperialists much like the leaders of that utopia Venezuela.
Commies gotta Commie don't ya know.
It's a wicked pissah.