More than 40 years ago, when President Jimmy Carter said that breaking our addiction to foreign oil was the moral equivalent of war, no one dreamed that by 2018, shale producers would have mounted an increasingly successful, expensive campaign in that war. Today victory is in sight: The U.S. is exporting more crude oil than it imports, even if it’s not yet completely independent.

But opponents have dropped new bombs into the fray. Just look to Colorado for the warning shots. In Chris Sheehan’s column in this issue, he outlines details about Initiative 97 on the November ballot. According to the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, if passed, this would eliminate about 94% of non-federal land in Weld County, which is where the vast majority of Colorado oil and gas drilling and production occur. Voters could deal a devastating blow to pure-play E&Ps and midstream firms there.

Then look to California. Like it or lump it, this bellwether state for social change has declared that by 2026, half of its electricity must come from renewable fuels and by 2045, the state must be 100% “decarbonized” for electric generation. That’s ambitious, if not unrealistic, because today California gets most of its energy from coal-fired power plants in nearby states and natural gas-fired plants in state, with some hydro in the mix.

Some 30% of the state’s electric power does come from renewables—but at what cost? Between 2011 and 2017, California’s electricity prices per kilowatt hour rose five times faster than they did nationally. Today the state on average pays 60% more for electricity than any other state.

We asked Alex Epstein, energy advocate, speaker and author of the 2014 book, “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” for his take on this. “I and other residents of California pay some of the nation's highest—and fastest-growing—prices for electricity, despite living in a state with abundant, cheap hydroelectric power and with our leading source of electricity, natural gas, at near-record-low prices,” Epstein told Investor.

“Our state mandates that we use unreliable, intermittent, expensive forms of electricity such as solar and wind. These add cost to every grid they touch, because we always have to pay both for them, and for the reliable forms of energy we need to back them up. The victims [of this renewables mandate] will not be the elites who feel good by promoting ‘clean energy,’ but middle-class and poor Californians who will be impoverished by skyrocketing power bills and shrinking job opportunities.”

A new ally for the energy industry has emerged, however, for at press time the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to water down its regulations on methane emissions. It currently requires oil and gas producers and midstream operators to inspect for methane leaks from their facilities every six months, and to repair them within 30 days. The latter was challenged in court. The revised rules would instead require them to perform emissions inspections only once a year, and take 60 days to make any necessary repairs.

The EPA’s proposal would also allow E&P companies operating in states with weaker methane standards to follow those rules, instead of federal rules.

Tipro and other trade groups noted that E&P companies have reduced methane emissions by more than 14% since 1990, while overall natural gas production has increased by more than 50% during this timeframe. “This decline is attributable to voluntary actions from operators.”

Enlisted in the battle is One Future, whose member companies include Hess Corp., Apache Corp., EQT Corp., Kinder Morgan Inc. and Southern Gas Co. The group aims to reduce average emissions across all upstream and midstream facilities to 1% or less of total natural gas production by 2025. The EPA has estimated that the methane emissions are now 1.3% of gross production.

But it’s apparently hard to decipher the truth, as a recent study said methane emissions are actually higher than experts first believed, likely around 3%. Clearly, more research needs to be done to determine an accurate scope of the challenge.

Epstein’s thesis about energy? “To be moral is not about changing the energy mix to minimize our impact on nature (including climate), although that can be a worthy goal. Instead, it is to maximize human flourishing that occurs when people and businesses have enough affordable energy.”

By this, he means that using fossil fuels empowers the world. That sounds like a lofty notion, but taken down to the level of most people, it means lights on so that a kid can study after sundown, and the parents can cook a meal without having to use animal dung or coal briquettes, endangering their health.

This industry talks about the importance of barrels of oil equivalent all the time, but I’d like to find a way to measure moral energy equivalents. This would be a way to discuss what energy producers do for our standard of living, the economy and the environment; perhaps something like barrels of oil generated and dollar economic output per rig, divided by emissions reductions?

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