Yes, folks I believe we are entering a “Golden Age” for Wyoming based on the country’s energy needs and our state’s ability to quench them.
With a fossil fuel-friendly administration in the White House, a friendly Congress, and the sensible Supreme Court, Wyoming’s capacity for generating energy here has not seen such a green light in decades.
And with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, which requires gigantic amounts of energy, a perfect storm may have arrived with everything in place.
All Things Energy
We love Wyoming’s unofficial motto of being “energy breadbasket of America.”
Even with an unfriendly government in Washington the last four years under President Joe Biden, we saw energy development in the Cowboy State grow and do well.
Renewable energy even flourished. Fields of wind farms showed up across the state’s vast prairies. There were even large solar arrays planned. As residents of this state know, we get more wind than any other state. And we also bask in 300 days a year of bright sunshine.
But fossil fuel production is where the state really shines. We have a 300-year supply of coal and vast amounts of natural gas and oil.
There is a mistaken belief out there that coal-fired power plants are more expensive to run that natural gas-run power plants. The biggest cost to coal-fired plants across the country is the cost to transport our clean-burning coal to the plants by railroad. If you build the power plant next to the mine, it becomes much cheaper to operate.
Thus, we are hearing this week about a new coal-fired power plant being planned for the state.
Coal still makes sense when it comes to making electricity. It is the rail costs of transporting it that makes it so pricey.
The newest game in town is also one of our oldest. We have been mining uranium here since after World War II. Uranium booms and busts are legendary here.
Hold on to your hats – here we go again!
Trump’s Golden Age
During President Donald Trump’s talk to Congress last Tuesday, he kept referring to the USA entering an unparalleled “golden age.”
Well, one thing I know for sure about this upcoming national age – it will require energy, lots of energy. No other state is as poised to provide that energy as the Cowboy State.
With a stroke of the pen, Trump kills off time-wasting regulations and climate change “sky is falling” negative narratives.
In a matter of weeks, our energy producers in Wyoming have seen their regulatory situations go from awful to wonderful. When Trump says “drill, baby, drill” he really means it.
In some ways, Trump is a simple man. He sees America sitting on more energy than any country in the world and he simply says “let’s go get it!”
Nuclear Renaissance
Billionaire Bill Gates’ efforts to get a new uranium-powered power plant built around Kemmerer will boost energy production and create good jobs.
Data centers that help drive the artificial intelligence (AI) projects will be built near these power plants so they have access to reliable cheap power.
L&H of Gillette is also working with a Virginia company that makes smaller nuclear plants, similar to what power aircraft carriers. That technology will be huge for both Wyoming and the country going forward.
All Those BTUs
Wyoming truly is the energy breadbasket of the Western Hemisphere. I recall when Wyoming got to really brag about its energy prowess about a decade ago when then-Gov. Matt Mead appeared on the CNBC business show Squawk Box one morning.
The CNBC business channel interviewer asked the governor about what she had heard, that if “Wyoming were a country, it would be the largest energy exporting country to the USA in the world.”
The governor answered by referring to “the 10.76 quadrillion BTUs of energy that come from our coal, uranium, natural gas, oil, solar, and wind, being used both within our state and exported to the other 49 states.
Ten point seven-six quadrillion? How many zeroes is that, anyway? I think 10,760,000,000,000,000 is sort of how that would look.
Back then in 2011, Mead also mentioned in a very straightforward manner that we had 15 billion dollars in the bank (that’s $15,000,000,000). Our state budget is balanced and our unemployment rate is down to six percent. “Although we want to improve on that,” he said.
The cable channel show was going around the country and interviewing governors to find out how the states were doing. It could be imagined that the interviews with governors from California or Illinois were not any fun at all.
To Mead’s credit, he was not smug. He did comment on Wyoming’s conservative nature, which is one of the reasons our budget gets balanced and there is money in the bank.
When you ponder the state of state economies like Illinois, California, or New York, it must be hard for people across the country to even contemplate what it must be like to live in a state where things are predictable.
Wyoming must have looked like some kind of oddball almost un-American place to people living with all the uncertainty that mucks up the status quo of these other states.
You can only imagine how fortunate his situation looked to those other governors whose daily lives must be a lot like being the ball in a pinball machine, constantly getting battered this way and that from forces both expected and unexpected.
Plus, it was funny for an old-timer like me to hear the opening introduction where the interviewer commented to Mead “that Wyoming was not a boom-and-bust state like so many other states.” Really?
Bill Sniffin can be reached at: Bill@CowboyStateDaily.com
