Harvey Lays Bare Mexico’s Affordable Energy Addiction
Bloomberg News and other media outlets are attempting to score political points against natural gas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, yet the facts show Harvey has vindicated natural gas as the power source of choice in the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere.
In an article published Monday titled, “Wrath of Harvey Lays Bare Mexico’s U.S. Natural Gas Addiction,” Bloomberg News argued that Hurricane Harvey showed that Mexico is dangerously dependent on U.S. natural gas. What little facts Bloomberg News reported in the article, however, illustrated just how affordable and secure U.S. natural gas deliveries to Mexico are.
Hurricane Harvey was a monster Category 4 hurricane that hit the geographical center of the U.S. natural gas export industry and then stalled and pounded the region for several days. Harvey was just about the perfect storm in terms of a hurricane delivering the strongest possible punch to U.S. natural gas and our export infrastructure to Mexico. Few if any other hurricanes will match, let alone exceed, Harvey’s impact on Houston and southeast Texas.
Despite all this, Bloomberg News acknowledged that Harvey imposed merely a 16% decline in natural gas exports to Mexico the day after Harvey hit, and then exports quickly recovered again. Just how did Harvey “Lay Bare” Mexico’s U.S. natural gas “addiction”? As Bloomberg News conceded, Mexico’s state-owned petroleum simply asked consumers to cut pack petroleum usage (not natural gas) by 10% for a few days. If this is “laying bare” a dangerous situation, the world should be so dangerous.
The agenda of Bloomberg News and other mainstream media is to vilify any energy source other than wind and solar power. What Bloomberg News failed to mention in its story is that wind and solar facilities produced absolutely no power when Harvey hit. Not only is natural gas providing Mexico with substantially less expensive power than wind and solar, but Hurricane Harvey showed natural gas provides Mexico with much more reliable power in the event of a natural disaster.