Solar is MORE expensive than Gas (w/ receipts)

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Michael Tanner: [00:00:00] Newsflash. Solar is more expensive than natural gas, and we brought the receipts next on the Energy Newsbeat. [00:00:07][7.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:15] What’s going on everybody? Welcome into the Thursday, May 29th, 2025 edition of the Daily Energy Newsbeat Standup. Here are today’s top headlines. First off, Spain and the aftermath by Doug Sheridan, wind and solar are, in fact, more expensive. Next up from the Energy Newsbeat sub stack, has the solar market seen better days? Economic headwinds threaten solar industry’s bright future. Next up, man, that’s the crude truth. Water management challenges threaten Permian Basin oil production. Next up, world’s largest port launches three European green corridor projects. Is this just greenwashing at its finest, or does it have any value? Finally, Texas oil companies face new deadlines to plug inactive wells. A great, great story. Stu will then toss it. I will quickly cover everything that happened in the oil and gas markets as always. I am Michael Tanner joined by Stuart Turley. Where do you want to begin? [00:01:19][63.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:19] Hey, let’s start with our buddies there in Spain. Spain, the aftermath by Doug Sheridan. Wind and solar are in fact more expensive. This is very critical when you sit back and take a look over 55 million people were lost power in Spain in the week since Doug Sheridans done a lot of research and analysis and solar is the energy source we’ve modeled the most and argued by many of the most economic form of renewable energy. We decide to work backwards to see if solar capacity factors in 10 European countries below are the stats. And he lists out the stats, boom, boom boom, very, very nice, and he goes through in the conclusions. Michael, let me just address the conclusions. Based on a conservative set of assumptions and calculations, the relatively low solar capacity across Europe. We estimate that Portugal, Spain are the only countries in Europe that could come closely economically to justifying generating power from solar rather than gas-fired plants. Wow! Only two! But let’s pretty clear that generating cost and advantages for Spain and Portugal surely disappear after accounting for the massive cost for extra transmission, inverters, and other capital investment needed for solar energy. And point number three, Michael, furthermore, the average blended price of inlet gas would be even lower than what we’ve assumed if European countries were more willing to develop and produce domestic reserves of natural gas. Now remember Michael, two years ago, three years ago was it been four, three years ago Norway tried to shut down their natural gas fields and then Putin invaded Russia, they fired them back up. Not all of the EU is willing to drill their own natural gas field. [00:03:15][115.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:15] It’s pretty incredible. I want to dive into specifically the paradigm that you’re pointing out here. So in Portugal, the cost of annual solar capacity runs about $9.91 per MMBTU. Yet the cost to the gas inlet is about $4 per MMBTU. Spain is at $10.76. Italy at $12.21. France and Hungary at $13.10. Belgium at $15.31. Netherlands, Denmark and Germany $16.71 and the UK $18.40. All of that relative to a 4. Dollar MMBTU, a gas inlet, where if you layer then in all the other costs, you come to plant inlet in Europe at 11 MMBT. So as he mentioned, everybody but Portugal and Spain are lower than that $11 total full cycle loaded cost. And as you mentioned, the idea of now adding transmission, adding all the things you need is going to drop you way above that. I mean, this isn’t a shocker to me and you Stu, we already knew this. I think the real question is now for what is this, are countries actually going to use this data when they decide on projects? Because what this is showing is that if you choose, Solar over gas inlet what you’re really doing is you’re making a decision based upon politics and not economics [00:04:49][94.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:51] Exactly. In fact, the Spain energy minister basically said, uh, no, see, how did he put it? Solo Pano Goodo. He’s still going down the solo Pano Plano. [00:05:01][10.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:02] Yep, absolutely. Let’s move to this one we dropped on Substack today. [00:05:05][3.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:06] This one was a fun article to write, Michael. I wrote this this morning after looking at a few things and this is one of them. It kind of came out this way. Has solar markets seen better days? Economic headwinds threaten solar industry’s bright future. This is very interesting. Energy transition absurdities. David Blackman wrote the story today is the solar bottom set to collapse. It, this prompted me to write the other story. And if you take a look at it, I love for our podcast listeners in the article on our energy newsbeat.substack.com, you go, Oh, hell no. And you see a bunch of solar panels that men just beat us not with hail. So it is hail not hail. But when we take a. Look at subsidies, driving up a blow to the solar growth energy. And then you take. China’s overproduction is a double-edged sword. 80% of the world’s solar panels and driven costs are through economies of scale. And Michael, here’s the underlying energy security problem about this. China’s new discoveries last week about hidden controllers in all of their solar panels is a gigantic rut a row. And then you have… Grid connection delays, a bottleneck for growth, and then you have California’s curtailment of crisis wasted potential. California home to over 1.3 million residential solar systems, and they’re now not giving money back because it’s now negative during the day. They’ve got so much solar, but they don’t have storage. This is absolutely a horrific problem. Everybody went all in, but they didn’t have a good plan. [00:06:54][108.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:54] I love the last sentence of this article, the rhinos got to go, and I think you accurately point out that the fact that the Republicans in Congress cannot tonify all these executive orders around that is, like you said, truly means we are in a one-party rule. I mean, the Green New scam needs to get out of there. I mean this big, beautiful bill is crazy. You did a really, really great job of breaking this all down in our sub-step. The link’s in the description, highly recommend. You check us out at energynewsbeat.substack.com. Go subscribe. But I want to jump over to this one, another Substack article, this time on water management from our good friends over at The Crew Truth. [00:07:35][40.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:36] This one was really, really cool. This was a subsequent article that he did from, he did a earlier interview over the weekend, which I watched, which was water shortage in Texas land and water, big plans with commissioner Dr. Don Buckingham. It was a great podcast. And I did not realize honestly, how big of an importance, the land group that she’s in charge of. Really makes a difference and we take a look at the byproduct of permanent and prosperity is the amount of oil that comes out of this entire thing in the permanent and i have the bottom line on this article michael when you take a look at it is the crude truth is clear water not oil may dictate the permeance future and i firmly believe that innovation investment and excellent management will keep the crude flowing. As I wrote in the story, it also adds significant validation to his interview with Dawn Buckingham and his great work she’s doing for the great state of Texas. Now you take a look at this, Michael, I did not realize I knew water was a problem, but until I watched his podcast and I read this article, I didn’t realize how much of a problem. [00:08:51][75.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:52] I mean, this is such an un-talked about and undisputed fact that no one’s talking about it, but it’s such the financial burden is unbelievable. First, I mean let’s just look at in 2018, the disposal of transportation cost of the for me. Average. $5.11 per barrel of oil produced, that’s disposal and transport costs of the oil that’s produced. Now, that soared to about $9.44 in the Delaware due to higher water costs. Get this, Stu, in 2025, of that $9, estimates suggest that water disposal could add another $6 a barrel to operator’s breakeven price. And this, I think, is the most critical piece. That’s going to curb potential supply growth by up to 400,000 barrels a day. Which, if that’s true, that offsets what OPEC is going to add in all this. So it’s pretty insane. We’ve seen freshwater prices for fracking hit all-time highs at $1 to $2 per barrel. And this also goes into the nature of the NUDs and what’s going on with the potential earthquakes out there. I mean, there’s a lot to get in here. This is a great article. Highly recommend subscribing to The Crude Truth.  on the crude truth substacks. So excellent article by him. [00:10:14][81.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:14] That was a lot of fun and let’s go to the next story here. World’s largest port launches three green energy projects. Is this just green washing at its finest or does it have any value? Michael, I wrote this this story last night and when you take a look at the things cost of establishing green? Shipping corridors. This is nothing more than a group of really do you remember the one? Cartoon with Cartman in it when they were sniffing their own Backsides because they were trying to a it was absolutely they were so full of themselves They would sniff their own stuff because they thought they didn’t stink. This Absolutely the same thing. These are energy policies that are so bad it is a continuation of this let’s get down to the bottom line i want to go through some of these numbers consumers will pay more for everything out of creating a green energy corridor and pay more free everything the real pollution will not be addressed until we examine the real pollutions through real science will be merely throwing money down the green grift rabbit hole. That’s why the plants love CO2. Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 humans were not impacting the environment and CO2 is not the pollutant using energy creation sources like energy that, that create more that takes more to generate than it is part of the problem, ammonia, hydrogen, and even fuels like ethanol fine fall into that category of waste money. What they’re wanting to do is qualify different import shifting shipping areas. And they’re willing to use all the equipment using ammonia. [00:12:05][111.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:07] Yeah, I mean, that just scares me. I’d rather get, you know, it’s like, do you want to get in a car powered by hydrogen or a cow or a car power by ammonia? I’d Rather not blow up. So I’m going to take option route, which is walk. [00:12:20][12.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:20] And, and they were so proud of this. They were so elite. They were even doing the Cartman and holding their pinky out. It was disgusting. I mean, [00:12:28][8.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:28] I mean, it’s unbelievable. Like you said, what’s the number one rule of being a drug dealer? Don’t get high on your own supply. That’s exactly what they’re doing right here as they’re drinking their own Kool-Aid. I mean it’s unbelieveable what these partnerships are trying, I mean a green shipping corridor, get out of here. [00:12:48][19.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:49] And then take a look at retrofitting existing ships to use green fuels, 10 to 50 million per vessel. [00:12:56][7.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:57] I sniff, I smell a grift here. [00:12:59][2.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:00] I smell a grift. Holy smokes. Let’s go to this last story. And I am glad that we are taking a look at this. Texas oil companies facing new deadlines to plug in active wells. Michael, this is an excellent story. I believe this was from the Tribune, a texastribune.org outstanding article. Give them a shout out. The bill recognizes that once a well has reached the end of its economic life, there’s no useful purpose. The owner should be responsible for of plugging. And makes this the law in Texas said Todd staples, the association president hats off to him. Now, here’s where it gets a little bit of funny. There’s more than 150,000 inactive wells that are in Texas land. Regulators estimate nearly 8,900 of them have no established owner because the owner has either been bankrupt or no longer exists. Michael, this is really a manageable problem that has been identified. And I applaud the Texas legislator for going after this. You know what the difference between this and the solar and wind farms are? No, there’s absolutely not one dime set aside for 79,000 wind turbines in the United States for land reclamation. And that’s going to average between 35,000 and 95,000 million and 95 thousand per well site. That’s a lot of money, even by an Oklahoma standard here, that’s terrible. [00:14:29][89.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:28] Here. That’s $95,000 million. That is what you guys get when you go to Oklahoma State right there. No, I love this bill. This, you know, a little birdie actually, dare I call myself a journalist. And I got a source on this a couple of weeks ago that this was really coming down the pike. There’s a few companies here in Texas that have actually been helping to write this legislation. I want to be specific about what the rules say. So basically what this says was that if you have a … Well that has not produced for 15 years, you are required to plug it full stop. Right now, what you have to do is every year that you renew your P4, which is your operator’s license, your operator license, every operator has a P4. You basically have to announce how many inactive wells that you have. And based upon that, you’re required to plug 10% of them. Well, what they’re going to say is that 10% number, you’re going have to plug 10%, plus all the wells that have been inactive. For 15 years, which is going to clean up a lot of this abandoned well issue. Now, the issue of abandoned wells, I don’t think is meant by this, so I think there’s a little bit interesting, but there are over 150,000, as you mentioned, inactive wells here in Texas. Nearly about the difference is 9,000 of them have no owner because the company’s either bankrupt or doesn’t So there’s this interesting orphan well thing is going to have to come into play. There are some loopholes, their companies can get in and out of this. The part that does worry me a little bit about this, Bill Stu, is that it ends up coming up at the end of the day, there are certain provisions that basically say, well, it’ll be up to the commission to figure out how they want to enforce the bill. And my issue with that is, okay, great, one set of regulators does it this way, a new set comes in and does it this way, and you constantly are getting this. Flow of rules where you need to be hard and fast. It needs to be black and white, in my opinion, and not allowed to shift with the tides a little bit because it’ll be very, it’ll be very interesting. So, but I do applaud Texas for going this route and at least they’re trying to clean it up. [00:16:32][124.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:32] Oh yeah. And again, I’m going to reiterate one other fact, the difference between oil and gas, they got a grip. [00:16:38][6.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:39] Absolutely, guys. All right. Let’s jump over and cover oil and gas quickly here, guys, but before we do that, let’s quickly pay the bills. As always, guys news and analysis brought to you by energynewsbeat.com. It’s doing the team tremendous job keeping that website up to speed. Hit that description below all links to the timestamps, links to the articles. You can also check us out again on the world’s greatest substack, energynewsbeat.substack.com We’re really putting a lot more time into it, which has been really cool. We appreciate everybody who has subscribed so far. It’s one of the best ways to support the show is subscribe to us there. Subscribe to a paid subscription. You get full access to our archive. We have some paid-only podcasts that are available where the only place you can find it is on Substack, and then we are about ready to be rolling out some research reports that I’m in the process. And we are, the team is really in the process of writing. We’ve got the first one that’ll be coming out next week. Why IRR is a scam. That’s a great one, folks. I’d highly recommend checking that out. I’ve got a lot to say on why IRR is one of the dumbest metrics when it comes to underwriting portfolio projects. And finally, guys, shout out to Reese Energy Consulting for sponsoring the show, guys. ReeseEnergyConsulting.com. They are the midstream experts, folks, if you’re in the upstream space and need help with midstream, call them. If you’re in the midstream space. And you need supplemental work, you need rent team analysis, call them guys. Tell them that Energy Newsbeat sent you. They’ll love it and they’ll also get you a great, great bid on all your work. We love them. ReeseEnergyConsulting.com and then finally InvestInOil.Energynewsbeat.com if you’re wondering. As a chief investment officer, family office, how to allocate capital when it comes to the energy space, we have a great ebook that walks through all the different ways that you can allocate in this space. Sign up for that and we will get you all that information. Links in the description below or invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com. [00:18:29][109.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:31] Let’s look at some top line indices too. S&P 500 down about a half a percentage point. Same with the NASDAQ. A little bit choppy today in terms of the markets. Two and 10-year yields will up three-tenths and six-tents of a percentage point, dollar index up three tenths of a percentage points. A Bitcoin 107 500 or down about 1.3 percentage points, crude oil actually jumped about a one and a half percentage points it was all the way up above $6,250. Currently sitting as we record this at about five o’clock on the 28th at $61.84. Brent Oil down about eight tenths of a percentage point down to $64.85. Some real interesting happenings going on between both Brent and Crude that we’ll dive into in some later shows. Natural gas was up about four percentage points. Most of that has to do with the contract rolling over from the May to the June contract. So if you look at it on a day-over-day basis, it was actually down. From 380 all the way down to 353 or 353, so not a great day. Only really have to cover on oil prices is the fact that there’s some supply concerns coming out of the US-Iran trade talks. There is some interesting note that we saw followed up on supply. Basically US has barred Chevron from exporting any Venezuelan crude, which is sort of change in policy, which is interesting. We also did see that OPEC agreed to leave their output policy unchanged, which was key in, you know, backing and really having this oil price spike. You know, we also did see some Canadian wildfires happen that took some Canadian crude offline. So hopefully everybody is there. I think the other thing that we want to point out is that there’s another meeting coming up on Saturday, which eight of the other OPEC countries. Are expected to decide on an increase in oil price for July. Goldman Sachs, our favorite oil and gas analyst, saw the C basically them keeping production steady. So it’ll be very interesting what goes on there, Stu. But that’s really all I’ve got. There’s nothing too crazy in the news right now. Like I said, we’ve got a really great Substack article coming out next week on why IRR is a scam. I’ve been about halfway through finishing it up and I think it’s gonna be great. So highly recommend everybody check us out there. Who do we have coming up this Friday on the podcast? [00:20:43][131.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:43] It depends on, oh, we’ve got Robert Bryce. We’ve got Doug Sandridge and David Blackman. That’s going to get you ready to roll and we’re off and running. [00:20:52][8.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:52] Yeah, it’ll be great guys. So we appreciate you guys sticking with us here. We got one more show for this week. Appreciate you guys, sticking with this, but we’re gonna let you get out of here. Finish up your day. Appreciate you checking us out. World’s greatest podcast, Energy Newsbeat. We’ll see you next time, guys. [00:20:52][0.0][1231.0]

The post Solar is MORE expensive than Gas (w/ receipts) appeared first on Energy News Beat.

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