Week in Review – February 4, 2022

Monday readers learned of the Biden White House funding abandoned wells in the United States. The reasoning behind the decision comes after it was found that these unused wells were emitting harmful gases such as methane. Between the 26 states, there are over 100,000 orphaned wells that need attention. The danger with the gases being emitted also lies with the fact that 9 million people in the United States live within only one mile of some of these wells. This project joins the line of many movements to move the world away from fossil fuels and greenhouse gases, and is a key step forward for the Biden administration in their quest to move forward with the Global Methane Pledge.

On Wednesday OPEC announced that they would be sticking to their current output policy. This group of oil giants, while seemingly slow in progress, is starting to undo some of their record production cuts that saw 10 million barrels per day cut. That was enforced in April of 2020 to help the oil and gas sector recover from the harmful economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the main reasons for OPEC not releasing too much oil back into the market is that they believe boosting levels too quickly would create significant changes for demand.

Lasty, since Groundhog Day people around the country have been hearing about the effects of Winter Storm Landon sweeping through the country. Over 100,000 people in the path of the storm are now without power. With over 100 million people stretching 25 states in winter weather alerts since the start of the storm, this number is expected to rise as ice clinging to power lines and fallen trees are the primary aggressors of the outages. Many are also getting over a foot of snow in some areas where the storm’s blizzards are the most extreme. The danger for people in the effected areas is the ice that is expected to remain with cold temperatures throughout the weekend.

This Week in Energy Prices

Today crude opened at a price of $90.19, a change of $2.74 from Monday’s opening price of $87.45. Throughout the week crude increased steadily until reaching the its peak on Friday.

Today diesel opened at $2.8272, a change of $0.0122 from Monday’s opening price of $2.8150. Diesel followed the trends of crude this week Friday being the highest price of the week.

Today gasoline opened at a price of $2.6380, a change of $0.0781 from Monday’s opening price of $2.5599. Gasoline prices increased slowly throughout the week before spiking Thursday and Friday.