Energy Prospectus

IMO it is just one of the many outlandish promises that they know cannot be accomplished in the real world.

Drilling ban proposals divide Democrats in U.S. oil states . Reuters . The top 10 Democratic contenders have called for ending new drilling leases on federal lands. Two front-runners, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, go much further with calls to ban hydraulic fracturing - the technology driving the Permian oil boom - on both federal and private land. Such policies face resistance in western states with vibrant drilling industries, including New Mexico and Colorado, where Democrats also control both the governor’s office and the legislature. That could open up a rift within the party and an inroad into such states for Republican President Donald Trump - the nation’s chief fossil-fuel booster - in 2020 election. “Without the energy effort in this state, no one gets to make education the top priority,” New Mexico Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham told the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association conference in Santa Fe on October 8.

The disastrous impact of a fracking ban on U.S. oil production . Forbes . The economic impact of a fracking ban on shale oil would be somewhat different from the impact on the U.S. gas market, given that lower oil production can be much more easily replaced by imports. At least in theory. As is the case with shale gas, shale oil wells tend to decline sharply, so that a fracking ban would quickly lead to much lower production. Applying decline rates to current production (and the EIA’s projected trend for 2020), total shale oil production would decline by 8 mb/d over the course of two years (January 2021 to December 2022). This is perhaps slightly overstated (see note at end), and would be potentially offset by in part increased conventional oil drilling, but there would easily be an increase of 4 mb/d in oil imports by the end of 2022. Even if oil prices did not rise, that translates to an additional $7.2 billion per month on the U.S. trade deficit.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-ele ... SL8N27E6VB

Devin McDermott – Morgan Stanley
October 28, 2019 4:01 AM GMT

Several candidates for president of the United States in 2020 have called for a 'frac ban' if elected. While we think an outright ban is very unlikely, many other policy and regulatory channels exist to limit oil & gas development — a potential outcome worth monitoring, with mixed stock impacts.
We believe an outright 'frac ban' is very unlikely, but a potentially shifting regulatory environment is worth monitoring. As we move closer to year-end, investors are increasingly focused on the 2020 US presidential election and the potential for a changing regulatory backdrop. Throughout the ongoing Democratic primary campaign, one thing is clear: Proactive environmental policy to address issues such as climate change is a key focus of most candidates. At the forefront of this is either a clean energy standard or carbon tax as a strategy to reduce emissions. However, some candidates have also proposed a ban on hydraulic fracturing — the technology responsible for turning the US into the word's largest oil producer, and from a natural gas importer into a major exporter. Could a president ban fracking? We think an outright "ban" on fracking is unlikely and would be challenging to implement, for many reasons. However, perhaps any Democratic president who followed the current administration would mean a more stringent regulatory backdrop for the US oil & gas industry — a shift that we think would come with both positives (potentially higher commodity prices) and negatives (such as increased costs and/or lower growth) for the exposed stocks. Based on our conversations with various legal and regulatory experts over the past few weeks, many feasible options exist to constrain oil and gas activity, including a slowdown in federal leasing and permitting, increased impediments to new oil and gas infrastructure, and stricter methane emissions or flaring limits. Policy toward oil & gas production on federal lands could be the most likely to change.