Fwd: Three key points on Venezuela's oil

[Loretta Lohman]

Plus, data centers get a deal on electricity – at your expense.

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Dear reader,

In a violation of international law, U.S. forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, over the weekend, killing at least 80 people during the attack. President Donald Trump said Saturday that U.S. oil companies would take control of Venezuelan oil operations with support from the U.S. military.

The rhetoric evokes the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, when war protesters chanted, “No blood for oil.”

But a lot of things are different this time. It’s not a sure bet that U.S. oil companies even want to go into Venezuela. Politico reported that “people in the industry said the administration’s message has left them still leery about the difficulty of rebuilding decayed oil fields in a country where it’s not even clear who will lead the country for the foreseeable future.”

And over the past 23 years, the world’s energy outlook has changed in some key ways.

1. The U.S. has become a major oil producer. In the early 2000s, many U.S. leaders worried about energy independence, the idea that the country should produce enough of its own energy to insulate itself from global shocks and security threats.

But as Karin Kirk reported in 2024, U.S. oil and gas extraction “began to surge around 2007 when the development of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, gave rise to the shale oil boom. Oil and gas production continues to set records, even while U.S. consumption of oil is declining and methane gas consumption is not increasing at anywhere near the rate of production. The end result is that the U.S. is exporting more of these fuels than ever.”

2. Key global players are using less oil. China was the largest recipient of Venezuelan crude oil exports in 2023. But though China still consumes a lot of fossil fuels, it’s also investing billions in renewables, and more than half the cars sold in the country last year were EVs. Likewise, petroleum consumption in the European Union has also been gradually declining since a peak in 2001.

3. It’s now easier for individual consumers to cut ties with petroleum products. E-bikes, EVs, and free buses make it more feasible to reduce consumption of petroleum, especially when those vehicles are charged with wind turbines or solar panels.

Bill McKibben argued over the weekend that renewable energy is a tool for peace: “[I]t’s going to be hard to figure out how to fight wars over sunshine,” he wrote, adding: “What I’m trying to say is, if you’re for peace and democracy, then a solar panel is a valuable tool (and a valuable symbol, a peace sign for our age). Every one that goes up incrementally reduces the attractiveness of the oil that underlies so much conflict and tyranny. Right at the moment treaties and charters and constitutions offer limited protection at best; we should work to restore the national and global consensus that makes them valuable, but we should also work to push out the kind of energy that can’t be hoarded or controlled.”

– Sara Peach, Editor-in-Chief

Home electricity bills are skyrocketing. For data centers, not so much.

Karin Kirk reports:

Electricity prices in the U.S. are rising sharply, but the burden of rising bills isn’t evenly distributed.

A Yale Climate Connections analysis of electricity prices has found that data centers and other commercial electricity users are consuming more kilowatts than ever, but the price they pay for that electricity has risen only a little. And industrial users of electricity are actually paying lower prices, on average, than they were two years ago.

But between 2020 and 2024, residential electricity prices in the U.S. increased by 25%. In other words, people using their toasters, laptops, and electric heating and cooking at home are paying ever-increasing prices, while the data centers that are driving rapid growth in electricity demand are scoring handsome discounts.

A word of warning: this analysis might make you mad, but hopefully in a productive way.

Since 2008, residential bills have been rising more than in other sectors

Electricity customers are sorted into use types: residential for homes, commercial for businesses and data centers, and industrial for facilities like factories or refineries. The graph below shows how the prices paid by these three sectors have shifted over time.

From 1997 through 2007, electricity prices for all three categories of users rose and fell at a similar pace.

In 2008, that trend stopped. That year, electricity prices went up for residences but down for businesses and industries.

Over the next decade, home uses of electricity became more expensive, while electricity prices for businesses stayed nearly flat.

In 2021, the trend shifted again. Electricity prices for all three sectors began to rise steeply, but unequally. The gap between home energy use and business/industrial energy use became even larger. In the last two years, these differences became especially stark, as shown in the chart below.

In just two years, starting in 2022, residential electricity prices rose by 10%, while commercial prices increased by only 3%, and industrial electricity prices fell by 2%.

This is an example of the “K-shaped economy,” where things improve for some groups while getting worse for others. The lines on a K-shaped graph head off in different directions, illustrating an ever-larger gap between those benefiting and those left out.

Recent increases in electricity demand are mostly due to the commercial sector, which includes data centers

If any one sector is driving the growth in electricity usage, it would make sense for that sector to foot the bill for the power plants and power lines needed to serve their demand. So let’s look at how electricity use is growing in each sector.

A new pattern emerged in the last three years, as seen in the chart below. Commercial demand for electricity rose sharply and steadily, using 9% more power over just a three-year span.

Glenn McGrath, an electricity data analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wrote in an email that the growing energy needs of data centers “are likely a significant factor” behind increasing electricity use in the commercial sector.

To sum up the situation in recent years, household electricity use has grown the least of the three sectors, but that’s where prices have gone up the most.

The data illustrates how residential users are subsidizing the energy bills of A.I. and data centers, a perspective backed up by other recent analyses. A report by the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, Extracting Profits from the Public, lays out some of the reasons why Big Tech is able to off-load its costs onto the public and outlines specific steps policymakers can take to restore balance.

A big part of the problem is that the three sectors of electricity users are far from equal when it comes to their leverage. The report explains that companies that use large amounts of electricity can often negotiate lower pricing with energy suppliers, and in some cases, these contracts are secret. Complex rules and rate structures make it hard for the public – as well as regulators – to follow or engage with the process. Furthermore, policymakers have an incentive to attract new economic development in their state as technology companies shop around for the best pricing.

But for individual consumers, the situation is the opposite. In many states, people have no choice in their energy provider or their energy prices, and they can’t look elsewhere for a better deal. In the parlance of the energy industry, everyday people are often called “captive ratepayers” because we have little choice but to be the ever-faithful customers of a monopoly utility.

Ratepayers do have a voice

Decisions about electricity rates are made by public utility commissions, which don’t usually get much attention – but that may be changing. In the November 2025 elections in Georgia, two incumbent public utility commissioners were resoundingly defeated after residential electricity prices climbed by 41% in just four years. Commissions are increasingly criticized for rubber-stamping price hikes and not protecting ratepayers who are caught inside a monopolistic system.

If you’re interested in learning more about the electricity decision-making process near you, here’s a directory of public utility commissions in every state, and Canary Media wrote a user-friendly guide to engaging with your electricity regulators. The deck may feel stacked against the common person, but that might just be all the more reason to get involved.

Read the whole story.

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