Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: Earlier this year, the Colonial Pipeline, carrying gasoline and jet fuel from Houston to the southeast US was hacked.  The perpetrators got away with 75 bitcoins, at the time worth just under $5 million US.  Nobody really hurt, so no harm, right?

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: September 2021 has been an interesting month as energy supply crunches of all forms appeared all over the world. China is suffering from rolling power outages that are affecting residents and industry and the authoritarian government there has ordered traders and industry to secure as many energy supplies as quickly as possible. In Europe prices for electrical power and natural gas are climbing to record highs and in the UK petrol stations are running out of petrol to sell to consumers. Pressure on energy prices is starting to manifest itself in the United States as well, with California already experiencing an increasing number of rolling brownouts, sorry “flex alerts“.  Traders are starting to buy options on future contracts for oil at $200 / bbl. They are not far off, with natural gas prices in Europe in terms of energy equivalent at $140 / bbl (see note 1).

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: I know that this is supposed to be an energy blog, but for quite some time energy has become entangled with the environment, and rightly so because energy extraction and energy use affect the environment.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: Most readers have probably heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences, the more good that one intends then the more harm results (see also the Cobra Effect). Politicians have an intrinsic ability to apply this without fail. Then to make everything worse, there is Pournelle’s Law of Iron Bureaucracy, ensuring that even the slightest of good intentions are inevitably smashed by the insufferable protocols of bureaucracy. Such is the realm of politicians. But in the information age, the woke minority and sometimes business tycoons also suffer from these laws. Business tycoons can correct for such things, otherwise they go bust. Woke progs will often ignore reason and facts, those remnants of patriarchal suppression, in order to validate horrific outcomes. Eventually, though, the smoldering landscape or the increasing number of coal plants being built in Asia should overwhelm Woke feelings.  Unfortunately, politicians and governments are with us for as long as their privilege and pensions last and they rarely admit mistakes let alone mitigate or fix them.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: For several years, Bitcoins and similar digital currencies have been the rage, heralded as a true medium of exchange and value that is independent of government manipulation, as is seen with all fiat currencies. However, Bitcoins in particular have also generated rage amongst environmentalists because the energy consumption and carbon emissions required to support Bitcoins approach the total annual consumption of states like New York or exceed the total energy consumption of nation states like the Netherlands or Argentina.

Guest blog by Mr. R. U. Cirius: Here are some interesting and somewhat offbeat energy stories that haven’t gotten much media attention that OWOE readers might have missed.