The Economist has noted what happens when a country loses control of its energy prices.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin weaponized his country’s energy sources, restricting gas exports to Europe and driving up prices. Although wholesale costs have now declined across the continent, home energy and gas prices rose by an eye-watering 69% and 145%, respectively, compared to two years ago.
High energy prices can be fatal. They prevent people from properly heating their houses. Living in cold weather increases the risk of cardiac and pulmonary disorders.
The Economist compared deaths last winter to prior ones, employing a common metric of mortality: excess deaths. It discovered that deaths in Europe were higher than expected when we compared actual deaths to the number we should expect considering mortality in the same weeks of 2015-19. Between November 2022 and February 2023, 149,000 extra deaths occurred in the 28 European countries studied, representing a 7.8% rise.
Several variables could explain this increase. Nearly 60,000 deaths were recorded as covid-19 deaths among those that died last winter. The sickness most definitely contributed to more, either directly or indirectly, although it is unlikely to account for the entirety of last winter’s spike. The official covid death count was 79% of total extra deaths across our 28 countries between March 2020 and September 2022. It was 40% last winter.
The weather has also had an impact on the number of deaths. A December cold spell was accompanied by an increase in mortality. A one-degree Celsius (1.8-degree Fahrenheit) decline in average temperature during a three-week period is connected with a 2.2% increase in total mortality. However, because last winter was warmer than the average for 2015-19, the cold cannot be blamed for the increased deaths.
It appears that high energy prices had an impact. When comparing countries, the ones with the most excess deaths also had the highest rises in gasoline costs. We created a statistical methodology to separate energy expenditures from covid and temperature variations. Our approach also takes into account a country’s demographics, the number of covid deaths previous to last winter, and historical death underreporting.
The Economist estimates that a price increase of around €0.10 per kWh—roughly 30% of last winter’s average electricity price—was associated with a 2.2% increase in a country’s weekly mortality. If power had cost the same last winter as it did in 2020, our model would have predicted 68,000 fewer fatalities across Europe, a 3.6% decrease.
Australian conditions are not so cold as Europe so the effect of less heating on health will not be so stark. But higher energy bills hammer the vulnerable and, as now seems plain, can kill them as well.
Ironically, gas cartelier Santos declared yesterday that “gas, not renewable energy, is the “main game” in the transition to net zero while warning the industry’s opponents are focused on “killing oil and gas”.
This issue is now a matter of life and death, apparently. And the cartel is right.
Australia is being murdered as a nation:
Runaway gas prices have forced explosives and fertiliser manufacturer Incitec Pivot to opt out of Australia’s volatile east coast energy market by stitching up a deal to underpin a development in the resource-rich Bowen Basin and feed it cheaper gas.
Incitec has tried to turn itself into a miner before and failed. This is one of two of Australia’s most significant explosives makers being jeopardised while the other, Orica, is equally suppressed.
What are we going to fire at any foreign invader, or in support of allies? Marshmallows?
Oh, that’s right, they’re made in China too.
I can’t say for sure that Australia and Australians are being murdered by a foreign-owned, China beholden, fossil fuels cartel. What I can do is point to the symptoms of the cartel’s behaviour and ask the question.
Gas prices are still at $19Gj, 60% above the ruined Albo cap at $12Gj. Well above Asia and European prices for the same gas. Power prices are readying another 3% CPI shock including Budget subsidies:
Meanwhile, here are the profits of cartel member Santos. Other members of the cartel look exactly the same:
What does Santos have to say?
Santos boss Kevin Gallagher says the gas industry needs to do a much better job of “fighting back” and getting through to the electorate that gas will be an important part of the energy mix for many years.
“There is no doubt that both sides of politics see that differently. We would be kidding ourselves if we say they were all aligned, and all behind us – they’re not,” he said, after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton urged the sector to get on the front foot and defend itself from detractors.
“We’re in the firing line, so we do have to fight back.”
The Santos chief said that irrespective of politics, the industry needed to “tell our story”.
OK, let’s tell it:
- When Santos commissioned a second LNG train around the GFC, it assured Australia it had enough of its own gas to fill it.
- It did not, so it bought all spare third-party gas on the east coast over the next few years.
- The three LNG ventures in QLD (also run by BG now Shell and Origin) so overbuilt export capacity that it crashed the Asian gas price and it had to write down the value of its own LNG trains.
- But that was OK because the overbuilding was going to pay off in the long run given the cartel shipped out every spare molecule of east coast gas and the local price began to rise.
- By 2017, the local price had spiked 600% and Australians were paying more than Asian customers for their own gas. The Turnbull Government installed a domestic reservation policy that worked, more or less, until the Ukraine War.
- As Vladimir Putin strangled the gas supply to Europe, the local gas cartel strangled the gas supply to Australia and imposed European prices at home. That is, it war profiteered.
- The cowardly Albanese Government dithered for six months until it finally imposed a new domestic reservation regime with price caps.
- That worked until a few weeks ago when the cartel smashed them, even as the Treasurer ran around the country selling his Swiss-cheesed utility bill subsidies.
- This week, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton backed the foreign-owned, China beholden, gas cartel to the hilt in contradiction with his own party, principles, and hopes of leadership.
- Meanwhile, cartel assets are being traded like footy cards for scores of billions even as the cartel pretends that there is a capital drought for gas investment!
It is an energy and economic “story” of woe worthy of the evils of nineteenth-century Standard Oil and its American monopoly, or Enron and its power gouging in the twentieth-century.
The only difference is that in fucktard Australia there is no government worthy of the name nor Supreme Court to tackle it.
