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It came out of nowhere.
Monsters don’t only sneak up on you in horror movies. In the dark of Monday night, a storm system brewing in the Eastern Pacific still looked as if it would make landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, as nothing greater than a tropical storm. But within just 12 hours on Tuesday, Tropical Storm Otis intensified by 80 mph into a full-blown hurricane; when it made landfall just after midnight on Wednesday morning, it had exploded into an unprecedented Category 5 storm. Eric Blake, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center, called the event nothing short of a “nightmare scenario.”
Hurricane Otis is not the first storm to sneak up on forecasters this year, and if new hurricane research I recently covered is any indication, it won’t be the last, either. Hurricanes are more than twice as likely to intensify from a Category 1 storm into a Category 3 or greater in a single day than they were between 1970 and 1990, Andra Garner, an assistant professor at Rowan University, found when she looked at historic patterns in the Atlantic. “When storms intensify quickly, they can become more difficult to forecast and to plan for in terms of emergency action plans for coastal residents,” she told me via email last week, adding presciently, “I think these findings should really serve as an urgent warning for us.”
Here’s how five meteorologists have illustrated the unprecedented danger of Hurricane Otis:
Just to emphasize how poorly hurricane & global models performed for Hurricane Otis... here's the intensity forecasts initialized 24 hours ago, with the dotted black line showing verification: pic.twitter.com/DN5pf7lcOS
— Tomer Burg (@burgwx) October 25, 2023
And here’s another fun fact from meteorologist Tomer Burg about hurricanes named Otis doing surprising things.
Not too many storms are this unpredictable. Each colored line represents an intensity forecast from the NHC, made every six hours. The thick black line is the observed intensity. None of the models saw this coming either. pic.twitter.com/ljwxPYnEbV
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) October 25, 2023
#Otis took full advantage of a warm patch of ocean last night... passing over 31°C water on its approach to #Acapulco. The extremely rapid intensification from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane took place over this tiny area. pic.twitter.com/f6fpYD1DOk
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) October 25, 2023
“Imagine starting your day expecting a stiff breeze and some rain, and overnight you get catastrophic 165 mph winds,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School, also tweeted.
This is not just a rare & dangerous event for October, but anytime of year in #Acapulco, which has not been directly impacted by a major hurricane like #Otis in the EPAC best-track record (back to 1949).
The last hurricane to affect the area directly was a 75 kt TC in 1951. pic.twitter.com/kBh1QoosGB
— Philippe Papin (@pppapin) October 25, 2023
The last hurricane to hit the Acapulco area directly was a significantly weaker tropical cyclone in 1951. Philippe Papin, with the National Hurricane Center, further explains on Twitter why Hurricane Otis is distinct from Hurricane Pauline in 1997, a Category 4 storm that killed hundreds near Alculpoco due to regional flooding and rainfall, but which actually made landfall further southeast.
#Hurricane #Otis has intensified by 80 mph in the past 12 hours (from 65 mph to 145 mph). That's the fastest 12 hr intensification rate in the eastern North Pacific (to 180°) in the satellite era (since 1966), breaking the old record of 75 mph/12 hr set by Patricia in 2015. pic.twitter.com/O5BrIrUi5X
— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) October 25, 2023
Colorado State University researcher Philip Klotzbach emphasized why it’s so hard to prepare for a storm like Otis — because with that sort of speed, you just can’t see it coming.
Wow...seeing #HurricaneOtis rapidly strengthen from a Tropical Storm yesterday at noon to a Category 5 Hurricane at midnight is astounding...almost mind boggling. #Acapulco #Hurricane pic.twitter.com/9jgOu1F8Bg
— Meteorologist Zach Maloch (@ZachMalochWX) October 25, 2023
Mind-boggling, indeed.
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Three weeks after “Liberation Day,” Matador Resources says it’s adjusting its ambitions for the year.
America’s oil and gas industry is beginning to pull back on investments in the face of tariffs and immense oil price instability — or at least one oil and gas company is.
While oil and gas executives have been grousing about low prices and inconsistent policy to any reporter (or Federal Reserve Bank) who will listen, there’s been little actual data about how the industry is thinking about what investments to make or not make. That changed on Wednesday when the shale driller Matador Resources reported its first quarter earnings. The company said that it would drop one rig from its fleet of nine, cutting $100 million of capital costs.
“In response to recent commodity price volatility, Matador has decided to adjust its drilling and completion activity for 2025 to provide for more optionality,” the company said in its earnings release.
In February, Matador was projecting that its capital expenditures in 2025 would be between $1.4 and $1.65 billion.This week, it lowered that outlook to $1.3 to $1.55 billion. “We’re very open to and want to have reason to grow again,” Matador’s chief executive Joseph Foran said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. “This is primarily a timing matter. Is this a temporary thing on oil prices? Or is this a new world we live in?”
Mizuho Securities analyst William Janela wrote in a note to clients Thursday morning that, as the first oil exploration and production company to report its earnings this go-round, Matador would be “somewhat of a litmus test for the sector: we don't believe the market was expecting E&Ps to announce activity reductions this soon, but MTDR's update could signal more cuts to come from peers over the next few weeks.”
West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices are currently sitting at just below $63, up from around $60 in the wake of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. While the current price is off its lows, it’s still well short of the almost $84 a barrel crude prices were at around this time last year.
The price decline could be attributable to any number of factors — macroeconomic uncertainty due to the trade war, production hikes by foreign producers — but whatever the cause, it has made an awkward situation for the Trump administration’s energy strategy.
The iShares U.S. Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF, which tracks the American oil and gas exploration industry, is down 9% for the year and more than 13% since “Liberation Day,” while the rest of the market has almost recovered as the Trump administration has indicated it may ease up on some of his more drastic tariff policies.
If other drillers follow Matador’s investment slowdown, it could imperil Trump’s broader energy policy goals.
Trump has both encouraged other countries to produce more oil (and bragged about lower oil prices) while also exhorting American drillers to “drill, baby, drill,”with enticements ranging from kneecapping emissions standards to a reduced regulatory burden.
As Heatmap has written, these goals sit in conflict with each other. Energy executives told the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas that they need oil prices ranging from $61 to $70 a barrelin order to profitably drill new wells. If prices fall further, “what would happen is ‘Delay, baby, delay,’”Wood Mackenzie analyst Fraser McKay wrote Wednesday. “We now expect global upstream development spend to fall year-on-year for the first time since 2020.”
A $65 per barrel price “dents” margins for drillers, meaning “growth capex and discretionary spend will be delayed,” McKay wrote.
Matador also announced that it had authorized $400 million worth of buybacks, and itsstock price rose some 4% on the earnings announcement, indicating that Wall Street will reward drillers who pull back on drilling and ramp up shareholder payouts.
“We’ve got the tools in the toolbox, including the share repurchase, to make Matador more value quarter by quarter,” Foran said. Rather than “blindly” pouring capital into growth, Matador would aim for a “measured pace,” he explained. “And if you mean what you say about a measured pace, that means when prices get a little lower, you take a few more moments to think about what you’re doing and don’t rush into things.”
The Department of Justice included a memo in a court filing that tears down the administration’s own case against New York’s congestion pricing.
Secretary Duffy, you have no case.
That was the gist of a memo Department of Justice lawyers sent to the Department of Transportation regarding its attempt to shut down New York City’s congestion pricing program. The letter was uploaded mistakenly on Wednesday into the court record for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s lawsuit challenging Duffy’s actions. Oops.
The memo says “there is considerable litigation risk” in defending the letter Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy sent on February 19, ordering the termination of New York’s program. “It is very unlikely that Judge Liman or further courts of review will uphold the Secretary’s decision on the legal grounds articulated in the letter.” The memo goes on, however, to advise the DOT of another argument it could make that may be more successful.
The Department of Transportation has since replaced the trio of DOJ lawyers that authored the memo, The New York Times reports, and plans to transfer the case to the civil division of the Justice Department in Washington. “Are S.D.N.Y. lawyers on this case incompetent or was this their attempt to RESIST?” an agency spokeswoman told the Times in a statement.
Dated April 11, the memo was sent to the DOT after Duffy publicly affirmed the department’s demand that New York end the program by April 20, but before the secretary upped the ante of his threats to New York as the deadline passed, announcing Monday that he would put a moratorium on any new federal approvals for transit projects in Manhattan until the state shut down the tolling program.
Duffy had given two reasons that New York’s congestion pricing program, which charges drivers $9 to enter Manhattan’s central business district, violated federal statute. First, he argued that Congress only authorized tolling programs on roads where drivers have the option to take an alternative, free route. Second, he said the state had designed the program to be a revenue raiser for the MTA, New York’s state-run transit agency, rather than a true effort to reduce congestion, and therefore the toll was not set appropriately.
But the Federal Highway Administration had spent years assessing New York’s program before approving it. “Other than the Secretary’s decision itself, there is no other material supporting or explaining the DOT’s change of position,” the DOJ memo says. There’s nothing in statute that disallows a two-fold goal of raising revenue and reducing traffic. Moreover, the lawyers note, the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn a decades-long precedent that gave agencies broad authority to interpret their statutory mandates, will hurt Duffy’s case. They also point out that Judge Liman, the district court judge who is presiding over the case, had previously ruled that the Value Pricing Pilot Program, the federal statute under which congestion pricing was approved, was designed to support these kinds of programs.
The memo warns that continuing down this route could open up both the department and Duffy personally to further probes. “The thin administrative record may lead plaintiffs to point to these ‘gaps’ in the administrative record as justification for extra-record discovery from DOT,” it says, “including requests for production of emails and depositions of agency officials, including the Secretary in particular.”
If Duffy really wants to win this case, the DOJ advises, he should instead claim he’s revoking approvals due to “changed agency priorities,” rather than saying the program violates statute. There’s precedent for using this argument to terminate “cooperative agreements” between the federal government and third parties, and Duffy could cite the same two reasons that he’s already provided. It’s not a sure thing, the memo suggests, but it’s more defensible than the current path.
New York has refused to comply with Duffy’s demands and confirmed in a court filing on Wednesday that it would not shut down the program unless and until the court tells it to.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the removal of the memo’s authors from the case.
The Esmeralda 7 project is another sign that Trump’s solar freeze is over.
The Esmeralda 7 solar project, a collection of proposed solar farms and batteries that would encompass tens of thousands of acres of federal public lands in western Nevada, appears to be moving towards the end of its federal permitting process.
The farms developed by NextEra, Invenergy, Arevia, ConnectGen, and others together would add up to 6,200 megawatts of solar generation capacity, making it the largest solar project in already solar-rich Nevada.
To get a sense of the massive scale of the project, the two newly installed nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia are about 1,000 megawatts each and the Empire Wind offshore wind project that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum ordered a halt to this week had a planned capacity of just over 800 megawatts.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management updated its website for the project, indicating that the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project would be published on April 25 and the record of decision would be published on July 18.
A Bureau of Land Management spokesperson told me that the Bureau wouldn’t have anything new to share until the publication of the final environmental impact statement “in the coming days or week or so.”
Still, the fact that the BLM is making progress on a decision at all is yet another sign that the “freeze” on renewables projects put in place in the early days of the Trump administration has begun to thaw, at least for solar and transmission projects.
The new decision date is also consistent with the freeze being over. A timeline presented at a BLM meeting in September envisioned the final Environmental Impact Statement being issued sometime between the fall of last year and spring of this year, with a record of decision in April. The listed July date would roughly match with the project’s permitting being delayed by two months.
The 60-day renewable permitting pause was one of Trump’s first actions in office and the offshore wind industry especially has continued to bear the brunt of the administration’s anti-renewable wrath.
But solar and transmission appear to be a different story: a Bureau of Land Management spokesperson told Heatmap in March that “there is currently no freeze on processing renewable applications for solar” or for “making authorization decisions.” Earlier that month, BLM had approved a transmission line for a solar project in Southern California saying that the project would “Unleash American Energy.”
Like many large scale Nevada solar projects, the Esmeralda 7 has attracted some opposition from some area residents and conservation groups. The transmission line necessary for the project, Greenlink West, was approved in September.