Biden Shuts Down 2 Nuclear Power Plants, 4 Hydroelectric Dams, 1 Refinery

Shutting down oil, coal and gas? Just getting started. One refinery in the Virgin Islands, Limetree Bay Refinery. Nuclear? Turkey Point outside of Miami. Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania. Four Hydroelectric dams in Southern Oregon and Northern California – The Klamath River Dams. The indications from the agencies are they are just getting started.

Add that to Biden’s yanking 77 small refineries biofuel waivers that now put them at risk for bankruptcy.

The TVA wants to replace a coal fired plant with natural gas. That would put the federal Tennessee Valley Authority out of step with President Joe Biden’s administration goal of a carbon-pollution-free energy sector by 2035 so they say.

Finally, no one talks about the “energy credits” required that increase the cost of energy.

Limetree Bay Refinery:

Capable of refining more than 200,000 barrels of crude per day, the refinery had reopened in early 2021, following a nine-year hiatus preceded by a string of oil spills and alleged Clean Air Act violations. In a separate letter earlier this month, EPA had outlined other requirements, including the need for fence-line monitoring for benzene, a carcinogen.

They have not one chance in hell of getting a new Clean Air Act permit. Not one chance.

EPA told the new owners of a shuttered U.S. Virgin Islands oil refinery that they may need a new Clean Air Act permit, a hurdle that could significantly slow any plan to reopen the plant.

While regulators are still gathering information, there are “strong indicators to suggest” that the Limetree Bay refinery must get a Prevention of Significant Deterioration pre-construction permit before restarting operations, Liliana Villatora, an air branch chief in EPA’s New York City-based regional office, wrote in a letter today to lawyers for West Indies Petroleum Ltd. and Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation LLLP, which jointly bought the facility at a bankruptcy auction late last year (Greenwire, Dec. 22, 2021).

Under the act, large industrial operations must get a PSD permit before beginning work on a “major modification” expected to lead to a significant increase in emissions of pollutants like soot and sulfur dioxide. In the letter, Villatora did not spell out why EPA suspects the permit is needed but asked the two companies to reply as soon as possible to a series of questions related to the plant’s brief reopening last year and their plans for its future, along with their own analysis of “PSD applicability.”

After Launching Push To End Oil & Gas, Biden Blaming Oil Refineries For Not Doing “Patriotic Duty”

A:

U.S. agency reverses 30-year license extension for Miami’s Turkey Point nuclear power plant, orders environmental review

Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant. Peach Bottom Nuclear Plant

So after making “significant investments” Biden shuts it down. Does anyone still wonder why energy companies are not making any further investments? Here is the headline back in 2020:

NRC also reversed a license extension for the Peach Bottom

Here was an earlier happier time:

Peach Bottom nuclear plant gets 20-year license extension 

Peach Bottom nuclear power plant can operate into the middle of this century, federal regulators say.

The southern York County plant’s license was to expire in 2033, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is extending that license another 20 years.

Exelon Generation, the plant’s owner, said in a news release that its two reactors generate electricity for more than 2.7 million homes. Seven hundred fifty people work there full-time, the company says. Roughly another 1,800 workers are brought in for maintenance when the plant shuts down each year for refueling.

Exelon says in the past seven years, it has made “significant investments” in equipment and technology that have increased its capacity by about 12 percent. That work has included replacing or upgrading turbines and power transformers.

Peach Bottom is one of four nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania.

Read more

Feds to shut down four energy producing dams

March 1, 2022

The structures are the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far northern California producing hydroelectric energy and built in 1918. We are apparently so flush with energy that no concern is being given for additional energy resources for replacement. Especially California. 

The environmentalist jihad won’t stop on the Klamath River:

The project on California’s second-largest river would be at the vanguard of a push to demolish dams in the U.S. as the structures age and become less economically viable and as concerns grow about their environmental impact, particularly on fish.  AP

CBS Local:

Now, plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath’s lower reaches — the largest such demolition project in U.S. history — have placed those competing interests in stark relief. Tribes, farmers, homeowners and conservationists all have a stake in the dams’ fate.

“We are saving salmon country, and we’re doing it through reclaiming the West,” said Amy Cordalis, a Yurok tribal attorney fighting for dam removal.

The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs, and could revive plummeting salmon populations by reopening habitat that has been blocked for more than a century. One of the dams is pictured below:

Photo courtesy of Michael Wier

Klamath River Dams: KRRC’s Proposed Dam Removal Project

EPA Yanks 70 Small Refinery Biofuel Waivers -Threatens Their Survival

Biden is deliberately putting up to 88 small refineries at risk. Most do not have the capacity to refine added biofuels and instead are forced to buy “energy credits.”

Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of renewable fuels into the nation’s fuel mix, a policy intended to help farmers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and cut U.S. petroleum imports.

Small refiners can seek waivers to the mandates, or an SRE, if they can prove the mandates would financially harm them.

Biden wonders why refinery capacity is down???

Chet Thompson, CEO  of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said the blending requirement for this year is “contrary to the administration’s claims to be doing everything in their power to provide relief to consumers.”

“Unachievable mandates will needlessly raise fuel production costs and further threaten the viability of U.S. small refineries, both at the expense of consumers,” Thompson said.

Prices for the credits jumped to a record high of almost $2 in June from only 10 cents at the start of 2020, the resolution said. They are now the second-largest expense for refiners like PBF, after crude oil. The document noted that 800 million fewer credits were issued last year than were needed to meet the 2020 standard.

Announcement also include denial of refinery exemptions

The EPA, after gathering comments since releasing it proposed blending requirements in December, said Friday it will require refiners to blend 20.77 billion gallons of ethanol, biodiesel and other renewable fuel this year.

The agency also denied roughly 70 exemptions for small refineries,(June 2022) many of which had been granted under former President Donald Trump. (Yahoo)

President Joe Biden wrote letters to seven CEOs of oil companies saying that while Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the spike in oil and gas prices, he’s calling on oil companies to explain why they’ve had a drop in refining capacity at a time when profits increase.

South Jersey refinery says cost-mandated fuel credits threaten its survival

The biofuels industry’s RFS struggles span several administrations. Most recently, the Trump administration granted 88 small-refinery exemptions in four years, setting off a legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Industry groups have placed their hope in the Biden administration to set a different course on the RFS.”

To comply with the standard, PBF and other refiners who are unable to blend biofuels such as ethanol with gasoline and diesel are required instead to buy credits called Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, that have recently surged in price because they are traded on the open market.

The burden of the credits is worsened, the independent refiners say, by the fact that they buy them from larger competitors who have the technical ability to blend biofuels, and so earn the credits that they can then sell to the smaller companies. That amounts to the smaller companies effectively subsidizing their competitors, they say.

They had this refinery scheme as early as last year. Biden knew this credit business was a problem. Democrat Lawmakers joined in by writing the EPA urging that the refiners not be given any relief:

• June 21, 2021

“U.S. merchant refiners have amassed up to a $1.6 billion shortfall in the credits they will need to comply with U.S. biofuel laws, according to a Reuters review of corporate disclosures, an apparent bet that the Biden administration could let them off the hook or that credit prices will fall.

“The big liability among companies including PBF Energy Inc, CVR Energy Inc, Par Pacific Holdings and Delta Airlines comes as the administration of President Joe Biden considers granting oil refiners relief from their biofuel mandates amid soaring credit costs and economic turmoil from the coronavirus pandemic that has hurt the fuel industry. It has been widely reported that the energy companies lost over $30 Billion dollars.

Totally wacko.They want to change from coal to gas!!! – Out of step with Biden!

Fed utility weighs coal plant switch options, climate impact

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The nation’s largest public utility plans to shut down a massive coal-fired power plant, but wants to replace it with natural gas. That would put the federal Tennessee Valley Authority out of step with President Joe Biden’s administration goal of a carbon-pollution-free energy sector by 2035.

Officials with the utility argue the natural gas move would help pave a path toward more renewable sources and away from coal, while continuing to keep rates low and the electric grid reliable. But environmental groups warn the agency could squander the chance to get away from carbon-producing fossil fuels that drive climate change. Worth the full read of craziness. Read more

The coming look of the Tennessee Valley

The very best of the swamp.