Prediction Not checkable as stated
Yergin: Russia will become China's dependent junior partner within four years
“Being cut off from technology will show up over three or four years, and it will have lost its most important market, so I don't think it's going to be an energy superpower in the way that it's been in the past, and it's going to be very dependent on China. An…”
Insight
Yergin: WTO consensus is over, replaced by US-China competition
“Well, that's gone. That is gone. It is now the era of great power competition, and that's the U.S. Versus China.”
Insight
Yergin: Historical energy price controls were completely counterproductive
“Well, I think the lessons of those price controls were that they were completely counterproductive. They did not send any message about demand, and they hindered the development of supply”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Yergin: EV battery recycling will not supply enough minerals by 2035
“The issue is you won't have that many electric car batteries to recycle in the time frame because, you know, you're going, we're in twenty-twenty-two now, you know, going into twenty-twenty-three and you're looking at twenty-thirty-five. That's, 12 years.”
Opinion
Yergin: Putin operates like the CEO of Russian energy
“And one thing about Putin is that he really understands energy markets. Over the years, people have dealt with him, said it was like dealing, like, almost like the CEO of Russian Energy.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: European wholesale power costs will exceed $1 trillion in 2022
“Typically, the European wholesale electric power costs are a hundred to hundred and fifty billion dollars. This year, they'll be over a trillion dollars.”
Insight
Yergin: Reforming electricity markets during a crisis guarantees structural policy mistakes
“Usually when you do major reforms of something as fundamental as your electric power system, and you do it in the middle of a crisis you're going to make You're going to build in mistakes, so they need to deal with the short-term crisis and then rethink their …”
Opinion
Yergin: Near-term fossil supply and decarbonization goals are not fully reconcilable
“Yeah, I don't think they're necessarily totally reconcilable, actually.”
Opinion
Yergin: The Inflation Reduction Act may actually increase clean energy input costs
“I don't know why it's, I mean, called the inflation, it has very little to do with inflation reduction, in fact, may actually increase costs of inputs.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Yergin: Reshoring clean energy supply chains to the US will increase costs
“So it's an effort to bring it back to the United States, and it will come back to the United States, but it's probably, you know, not, it's going to cost more, not less.”
Assertion Partly supported
Yergin: China's Russian oil imports surged from 1M to nearly 2M bpd
“You know, it's interesting to see, since this crisis began, they're up to almost two million barrels a day on Of Russian oil now. And, you know, before they were kind of keeping it at a million barrels a day.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: Russia is earning more from energy in 2022 than in 2021
“One is the fact that Russia is making more money out of energy this year than it did last year.”
Insight
Yergin: The energy transition shifts dependency from big oil to big shovels
“And that's, you know, in, in, in the new map, the way I phrased it, is you go from big oil to big shovels, because you're going to need so much more mining, and the volume of mining, I think, is just not really recognized.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Yergin: Current mining rates will cause a severe copper shortage
“Well, I think that even with what we said, wildly optimistic assumptions, you don't get there, and if you continue at the rate we are in terms of mine development, efficiency of mines, and recycling, you end up with quite a big shortage, which would be a real …”
Insight
Yergin: Current energy crisis involves oil, natural gas, and coal simultaneously
“Well, it is a very big disruption in the energy markets, and in a sense, it's global, or maybe you can even say all-encompassing, because it involves not only oil as previous crises, but natural gas and coal.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: US LNG supplied Europe more gas than Russia in Jan 2022
“And in fact, one point in January, before the crisis, the U.S. LNG was supplying more natural gas to Europe than Russian pipeline gas.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: Chinese companies resold LNG cargoes to Europe at a markup
“In fact, Chinese companies recently have sold cargoes of LNG that they had purchased from other people to the Europeans at a higher price.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: Russia's share of India's oil imports jumped from 1% to 20%
“Russia used to supply one percent of India's oil. Now it's supplying 20% of India's oil.”
Assertion Contradicted
Yergin: IRA provides 5x tax credits for using union labor
“Five times the tax credits if you use union rather than non-union labor.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Yergin: Europe is entering recession and US will likely follow
“And so I think certainly Europe's going into recession, and a pretty high expectation that the U.S. Will be in a recession, and that's now permeating the oil price”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: High LNG prices force developing Asian nations into coal and blackouts
“Countries that were counting on LNG in Asia, for instance, developing Asia, can't afford it. So what do they do? They burn coal, or they have blackouts.”
Insight
Yergin: The global move to clean energy consists of multiple distinct transitions
“There is a divide that has not been Recognize so much, but it's a different view, as the former energy petroleum minister of India said, it's not an energy transition, there are energy transitions.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: European natural gas peaked near the energy equivalent of $600/barrel
“We saw natural gas, at least for a point, trading at close to the energy equivalent of 600 dollars a barrel.”
Assertion Supported
Yergin: US nears status as world's largest LNG exporter in six years
“It was only in 2016 that the first cargo of LNG left the United States, and today the U.S. Is, or is close to being the world's largest exporter of LNG”
Dr. Daniel Yergin